Recognition of Assumptions
The potential analyzed in the 2021 Plan represents the availability of utilities to influence or control end-use customer loads to provide relief during peak events. This potential analysis is meant to be illustrative of the overall likely amount of demand response that could be achieved in the region, based on several assumptions.
First, although DR could be used for balancing or ancillary services, this was not modeled in the Council’s resource strategy analysis. In order to assess the technical and economic viability of DR to provide these services, additional research would be necessary. This does not mean that these other applications of DR are not cost-effective or viable options and utilities should consider these applications for their systems.
Second, not all potential DR products were included in this analysis.[1] Some additional products not incorporated in the 2021 Power Plan though could be deployed include (but are not limited to): Behavioral DR; Peak Time Rebates for residential customers; time-of-use tariffs for non-residential customers; thermal energy storage; non-residential electric vehicle charging control; and segment (e.g. refrigerated warehouse or data centers) or end-use (e.g. lighting) specific products.
Third, a utility that delivers a DR product may have different program design parameters than what were assumed in this analysis. For example, a utility may choose an opt-out time-of-use rather than an opt-in approach. This generally results in larger participation, but lower per-participant impacts. The incentives may also change adoption (for example, see BPA DR Elasticity Analysis). If a utility offers a significantly higher incentive, it will likely increase participation and thus impacts; cost will also be increased.
Fourth, the long-term adoption of DR will be impacted by several factors, such as: utility-specific needs, where the peak need may or may not correspond to a regional need; AMI adoption enabling price-based DR; interaction with energy efficiency; and changing technologies.
In addition, the 2021 Plan assumed that DR could defer transmission and distribution investment by lowering peak loads. The total value of deferral was around a levelized cost of $9.80 per kilowatt-year. This represents an average over the entire region, recognizing that some areas have zero value while other areas may have significant value. If DR is targeted to a high-value location, this deferral value could be substantially higher than what is assumed for a region-wide assessment.
Scenario Assumptions
The DR supply curves were modified for two scenarios: Analyze the Bonneville Portfolio, Paths to Decarbonization. More details on the scenarios can be found here.
For the Bonneville scenario, the potential reflects the portion of load under public power utilities that receive some or all of their electricity supply from Bonneville. Excluded from this are New Large Single Loads and direct access customers, as well as loads excluded from the regional potential (data centers, street lighting, non-residential electric transportation). All product cost and impact assumptions were consistent between the Bonneville and regional supply curves, except adjustments were made to product eligibility to reflect differences within the Bonneville territory end-use saturations (e.g. there is a higher relative saturation of electric water heaters in Bonneville territory as compared to the region in total). The 20-year achievable technical DR potential for Bonneville is 1,463 megawatts for summer and 1,136 megawatts for winter, not accounting for interaction with energy efficiency.[2]
For the Paths to Decarbonization scenario, the DR supply curve reflects increasing potential from increasing electrification. As more loads are electrified, there will be a greater load basis from which to impact with DR. The 20-year DR achievable technical potential for the Paths to Decarbonization scenario is 4,634 MW in the winter and 5,039 MW in the summer.
In addition, for the Greenhouse Gas Tipping Point scenario, we did a sensitivity study on how the DR products were binned (the supply curves remained the same). More information on that can be found here.
[1] Many of the listed products were considered but ultimately not included in the 2021 Plan due to limited data, likely limited potential, or because of similarity with other products.
[2] More information on Bonneville’s potential relative to the region can be found here.