Exploration of PG&E AutoDR Incentive Options

PG&E is interested in designing new incentive structures for standards based Automated Demand Response (ADR) control technologies. Specifically:

• PG&E is interested in working with ADR vendors to explore different approaches to developing new channels through which third parties can provide ADR equipment to mass market participants, thereby encouraging broader Demand Response (DR) participation. 
• To expand the automated demand response (ADR) program to SMB and residential customers, PG&E would like to know if midstream incentives provided to retailers and distributors or upstream incentives provided to manufacturers are more effective at driving the adoption of ADR-enabled control technologies than current downstream incentives.
• PG&E would like to know if alternate measures for ADR can be developed that may better match ADR Program incentives to desired DR program results.

To help PG&E develop ideas for a DRET pilot to explore these issues, we

1. Reviewed the effectiveness of documented past efforts to change marketing approaches for similar utility programs.
2. Interviewed a wide range of people whose work is related to the provision of DR or energy efficiency (EE) in order to determine their interest in supporting such changes.
3. Analyzed the expected ADR from residential and SMB using physics based models to determine appropriate conversion factors for developing alternate metrics for ADR.

Based on these results, we developed some preliminary ideas for different incentive plans that PG&E can use to test whether upstream or midstream marketing enhances ADR uptake and what alternate measures of ADR performance improve the overall use of ADR within PG&E.