Earn Money, Participate in the Demand Response Program

I would like to tell you about a pro­gram that will allow your com­pa­ny to receive incen­tive pay­ments for reduced util­i­ty usage.  It is called the Demand Response Pro­gram.  Demand Response is a vol­un­tary pro­gram avail­able to con­sumers with medi­um to high elec­tric usage.  The nation’s elec­tric trans­mis­sion grid oper­a­tors will pay com­pa­nies quar­ter­ly pre­mi­ums for their com­mit­ment to be able to tem­porar­i­ly reduce the amount of ener­gy they con­sume if the grid ever needs their help. This com­mit­ment from com­pa­nies helps to pre­vent brownouts or blackouts.

Let’s take a look at how the grid works.  There are many facil­i­ties that gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty.  The loca­tion of these facil­i­ties and their dis­tance from the end users varies wide­ly.  Coal and nuclear plants have short-term flex­i­bil­i­ty in adjust­ing their elec­tric­i­ty out­put.  It takes them a long time to ramp up or down elec­tric­i­ty out­put.  Nat­ur­al gas fired plants, on the oth­er hand, can be ramped up very quick­ly, and are often used to meet peaks in demand.  There is a con­stant amount of back­up elec­tric­i­ty to com­pen­sate for fore­cast­ing errors or unex­pect­ed pow­er plant shut­downs.  Grid oper­a­tors con­stant­ly mon­i­tor demand, sup­ply, and reserve mar­gins to ensure that every­thing runs smoothly.

Trans­mis­sion lines car­ry high-volt­age elec­tric­i­ty over long dis­tances and con­nect elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tors with elec­tric­i­ty con­sumers. These are the over­head pow­er lines that you see.

Dis­tri­b­u­tion wires pick up where trans­mis­sion lines leave off.  They start at the trans­form­ers and end at the homes and businesses.

On August 14, 2003 there was a his­toric black­out.  An Ohio pow­er com­pa­ny set off the black­out sim­ply due to human error.  the black­out spread across New York, Penn­syl­va­nia, Con­necti­cut, Mass­a­chu­setts, New Jer­sey, Michi­gan, and even parts of Cana­da.  Offices were evac­u­at­ed and thou­sands of peo­ple flood­ed hos­pi­tals suf­fer­ing from the heat.  Even though our grid has come a long way since then, many more oppor­tu­ni­ties exist for improvement.

A Woost­er, Ohio com­pa­ny has been part of the Demand Response Pro­gram since 2011.  This com­pa­ny has received a total of $349,550.00 for their par­tic­i­pa­tion to date.

You can read more about this pro­gram in the “Our Solu­tions” sec­tion of our web­site, www.triplesenergy.com.