D1- “New Residential Demand Response Opportunities in SCE Service Territory”

Objectives:  1. EPRI identified “a need to conduct lab evaluation and field demonstrations, in order to identify gaps between program requirements and device response. Results 2 from such evaluations can be transferred to manufacturers and Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) for standards and product development.”     2. In addition, SCE has identified important changes in the energy environment that with both make residential DR more critical and may change how residential DR operates.     Among those key changes are: a. A growing emerging of distributed renewable energy sources (solar and storage) that has already been shown to accurately predict important changes in the daily cost of the supply of energy. These changes have shifted the times when DR was needed during the peak of the day, now into times when wholesale market costs are ramping up in the early evening hours and loads need to “shift” into the middle of the day b. Recent experience in the SCE territory clearly showed that customers prefer DR coordination by manufacturers (e.g. NEST) rather than via a home area network concept with a coordinating device that communicates directly with the utility. However, local grid needs may change that approach, as SCE examines how to manage the distribution grid effects   c. New devices being introduced to the residential market (e.g. Amazon Echo, Google Home) have the potential to create “Smart Homes” that can fine tune user energy use while providing increased comfort to consumers.   d. Other new technologies (e.g. heat pump water heaters) can store energy in ways that may facilitate new ways to use DR by providing local energy storage for controlled release when needed by the grid.   e. The emergence of local energy storage “behind the meter” cannot be underestimated. Market forecasts of the increased adoption of residential batteries “paired” with household solar systems are off the charts.   Each of these key changes implies a need to better understand the residential DR enabling technology emerging markets and to identify optimal ways to enhance residential DR customer engagement though communication and coordination

Demand response (DR) encompasses a variety of utility programs and incentivized efforts in the industrial, commercial, and residential electricity sectors to reduce power at specified times to modify the electric utility system demand (or load). This report focuses on mass market residential electric uses and emerging communications and control technologies to determine which of these might provide useful DR resources in Southern California, especially for Southern California Edison (SCE). This research focuses on appreciating a better understanding of the emerging markets for residential DR enabling technology, and to identify optimal ways to enhance residential DR customer engagement through communication and coordination. It begins with a detailed look at what constitutes the residential sector within the territory served by SCE, and an estimate of electric end uses within that space. Next, it examines communication technologies and architectures needed to support DR in that sector. Finally, consistent with SCE’s interest in short-term applications of residential DR technologies, with further interest in research that is currently ongoing, it reviews the available options and proposes useful approaches to DR in the residential sector over the next two to five years. The final report also summarizes public policy and regulatory developments that affect residential DR.