Demand Side Response
Demand Side Response is about taking advantage of price changes to turn up, turn down or shift electricity demand in realtime. It is becoming a significant mechanism to balance the generation-to supply market, resulting in significant savings to consumers that can take advantage and, conversely, extra costs for those that cannot.
Whilst there are several national schemes (see below), the local Distribution Network Operator (DNO) applies charges for units based on their Red-Amber-Green (RAG) Zones, that vary between DNO regions, to recover their distribution costs. These are known as Distribution Use of System charges (DUoS).
Eco Warrior can help implement a combination of Load Shedding, Load Shifting and Demand Control that can deliver 10-20% savings to consumers willing to plan ahead.
A site on standard work hours can pay 50 to 80% of their DUoS charges in the Red Zone.
Load Shedding requires non-essential loads to be turned off for a short period or cycled to extend their Off periods.
Load Shifting requires loads to be moved from the expensive Zone to the cheaper Zone. As the Red Zone is several times more costly than the Amber Zone then resources should be focused on these boundaries. Amber to Green Zones can save but only a fraction of the previous.
Demand Control ensures that the Maximum Demand and the Supply Capacity charges are not exceeded in the quest to make savings from Load Shedding or Shifting.
Eco Warrior can deliver the realtime system to help manage the usage on site when these events are forecast or occur to maximise
savings and minimise interruptions to normal operations.
Preset Profile Targets, for individual, grouped or vertical metering points, can be tracked against actual usage and variations are
calculated and displayed for corrective action.
Existing schemes from National Grid include:
- Short Term Operating Reserve (STOR)
- Firm Frequency Response (FFR)
- STOR Runway
- Frequency Control Demand Management
- Demand Turn Up
- Fast Reserve
ECO Tools Additional Features
Upon entering the initial page of Eco
Tools, a summary of the selected period,
meters and data is clearly displayed
together with over 8 separate analysis
elements. Data can be displayed as
energy, volume, cost and carbon or it can
be customised to suit. These features
allow the manager and team or tenant to
see an overview of usage or drill down to
identify the exact point of interest.
Energy and cost can be displayed per
meter on a day, week and monthly basis
per half hour (the shortest recording
element of the utilities). Individual targets
can be created (part of the system) and
overlayed to easily identify exceptions.
A complete section allows the user to
analyse the highest, lowest and average
usage for any day, period, month and
season. Further analysis and reports are
available for totals, months, years and
maximum demands.
The data collector can be accessed and
interrogated for usage in realtime. Upto 8
meter profiles can be selected to be
displayed with updates every minute if
directly connected to the meter or as data
is received via a non-direct route e.g. via
radio.