Wednesday, November 8 (Click on the down arrows to see the sessions in each track!)
8:00 - 9:00 am
Breakfast in the Sponsor Lounge
9:00 - 9:30 am
Co-Chair Robin Maslowski Guidehouse
Co-Chair Corey Wheat COPELAND
Duke Energy's Winter Residential Smart Thermostat DR Program Duke Energy Carolinas’ Power Manager DR program offers a winter-focused BYOT option in which DR events are experienced by participants as remotely controlled thermostat setpoint adjustments. Learn about Duke’s analysis of its event period impacts, varying event performances and loads, thermostat data, and its customer feedback to understand how Power Manager serves Duke’s portfolio.
Small Utility, Big Impacts Tacoma Power, despite having significant hydroelectric power, implemented a water heater DR program with a randomized control and treatment design because of looming capacity constraints due to electrification. Learn about the WHDR program through Tacoma’s year of impacts which they modelled by month and by time of day, and correlated to occupancy and temperature. We’ll also review customer survey feedback and implementation insights.
Extraordinary Grid Conditions Require Extraordinary DR Programs California’s summer 2022 emergency DR programs were critical to stabilizing the grid. Learn about the resource portfolios from PG&E, SDG&E, SCE, and the California Energy Commission with a focus on both their dramatically larger sizes and the role of the Commission’s Demand Side Grid Support program in providing access to customers who previously had few opportunities to provide—and be compensated for—grid services.
Wendy Brummer Pacific Gas and Electric Speaker Bio
EV Managed Charging for Multiple Grid Benefits SRP’s EV Smart Charge Program leverages vehicle telematics and WeaveGrid's smart charging algorithm to understand and analyze grid reliability strategies using EVs as variable grid assets. With distribution-optimized EV charging, SRP has seen a reduction in timer peaks and load shifting into the early morning hours, plus peak EV load reductions of up to ~65% in some groups. Learn about SRP’s customer and program design insights.
The Winter Is Coming: Untangling DR Impacts During Winter Peaks Electrification of transportation and buildings has changed winter residential load shapes with customers adding morning and afternoon peaks. Learn more about these winter load shapes, their customers’ attributes, and how various DR program designs can curtail load. We’ll review load shape analytics, statistical modeling, and participant surveys. Plus, we’ll review the performance of heat pump technologies for curtailing load during winter DR events.
Beth Strasburger Portland General Electric Speaker Bio
Adam Gardels Portland General Electric Speaker Bio
Do You Know What Your DR Program Did Last Summer? Eastern North Carolina’s high peak demand charges of > $200/kW/year make DR programs popular there! The municipal utility in Clayton, NC, with 7,500 residential customers, has installed one-way DR switches on over 4,000 devices. Learn how these switches reduce demand, how many switches are operational, and the pricing that makes their business case work. Plus, Clayton’s DR results and their implications for the region.
Efficient Scalability: Leveraging Automation Over Manual Processes Learn about the role of automation in transforming the scalability of DR programs, as we focus on Con Edison’s lessons learned through scaling their DR programs by 30X in four years. We’ll discuss the integration of automation throughout the program lifecycle to support enrollments and in-season operations, including automated reports that provide system health overviews for situational awareness, plus APIs and OpenADR compatibility to ensure communication and data exchange with aggregators.
Using Dynamic Operating Envelopes to Maximize DER Utilization Bumpers on a Bowling Lane: The use of dynamic operating envelopes provides grid operations a mechanism to orchestrate and coordinate the impact of bi-directional power flows on the grid without over-constraining the grid. Rather than adding additional physical infrastructure such as poles, wires and regulators, the use of dynamic operating envelopes will allow NCEMC to accommodate more distributed energy resources (DERs) on the grid utilizing smart software and algorithms to optimize their impact. In addition, dynamic operating envelopes allow for a more intelligent use of the network’s hosting capacity.
Eric Hall North Carolina Electric Membership Corporation Speaker Bio
10:00 - 10:30 am
National Grid Gas DR: Enhancing Reliability in a Changing Climate Erratic winter weather and pipeline infrastructure constraints are driving utility interest in gas DR. National Grid’s gas DR program in New York State delivered > 2,300 dekatherms of event period load reduction in the winter 2022/23. Within the same territory, it also demonstrated the coexistence of gas and electric thermostat DR. Learn about the program’s design, enrollment process, M&V, baseline methodologies, and cost effectiveness.
Avoiding Heatwave Havoc: El Paso Electric Boosts Grid Resilience with Uplight’s DR El Paso Electric adopted Uplight’s DR solution to avoid summer grid emergencies. Learn how the utility used its Marketplace and DR to build critical load flexibility and maintain customer comfort during triple digit temperatures, while helping curtail nearly 4 MW of energy. Lessons include achieving program enrollment goals and maximizing customer retention during summer heat waves, plus a review of this summer’s DR season.
Residential DR: AC Direct Load Control vs Smart Thermostats Duke Energy Carolinas’ Power Manager DR Program offers both AC direct load control and smart thermostat enrollment options for residential customers. DR event dispatches overlapped both customer groups on several occasions, enabling a comparison of load impact performance. Learn about both customer groups’ load reductions, event awareness, customer experience and satisfaction, and the different portfolio roles of both offerings, plus their challenges and opportunities.
Price-Responsive Demand: Tales from the Commercial Sector The California Energy Commission and the California Public Utilities Commission have both mandated utilities develop hourly retail prices and present these to California customers with the potential for load shifting. Learn about SCE’s Dynamic Rate Pilot project which evaluates several aspects of this mandate, including methods for calculating and presenting hourly prices, the impact of partnerships with “Automation Service Providers,” and load shifting results.
Randy Robinson Southern California Edison Speaker Bio
10:30 - 11:00 am
Refreshment Break in the Sponsor Lounge
Sponsored by Sense
11:00 am -12:00 pm
Sponsored by Resideo
Co-Chair Mike Mazzola UNC Charlotte
Co-Chair Uros Simovic West Monroe Partners
Lessons from Fleet-based V2G Programs in Today's Market With significant aggregate battery capacity and unique charging behavior, EV fleets are valuable grid resources. Learn about current V1G and V2X fleet programs, including their ability to deliver consistent load shed, which proves the validity of using V2X for managing grid loads. Learn about scaling programs for enhanced network reliability, relieving distribution network stress, and increasing the penetration of renewables while generating revenue for owners.
Co-Chair Michael Brown Berkshire Hathaway, NV Energy
Co-Chair Tom Breare Octopus Energy
EV Demand Flexibility through Rates and Tech: Ontario’s Past, Present, and Future Collaboration between Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator, Ontario Energy Board, and its utilities (including Alectra) has supported Electric Vehicle integration through innovative electricity pricing. These organizations continue to work together to explore how technology, programming, and energy service offerings can deliver the dynamic EV demand flexibility that an EV-saturated future requires. Learn about the past, present, and future of EV demand flexibility in Ontario from a distribution utility, the system operator, and the regulator.
Moderator Peter Steele-Mosey Guidehouse Canada Speaker Bio
Maral Kassabian Independent Electricity System Operator Speaker Bio
Report Out: Performance of the Largest U.S. Behavioral DR Program California’s large, mandated, five-year behavioral DR pilot, Power Saver Rewards, a sub-group of the state’s Emergency Load Reduction Program, has auto-enrolled millions of residential customers since 2021. Evaluated in Spring 2023, Power Saver Rewards has undergone some implementation changes. Learn about the performance of the program and its customers to date, plus its incentive payments, and what’s ahead for this critical initiative.
Wendy Brummer Pacific Gas and Electric Speaker Bio
Looking Back to Lead Forward: OG&E’s DER Strategy Learn about OG&E’s long-established and evolving DER management program, SmartHours, which maximizes customer engagement while also addressing issues including diminishing returns, cost impacts, and event fatigue. This discussion includes the program’s use of emerging technologies and how these are balanced with popular program features, OG&E’s potential IRA funding opportunities, its capacity needs, plus the high penetration of renewables and the addition of cryptocurrency loads.
Moderator Maddie Emerson Oklahoma Gas & Electric Speaker Bio
What Will EV Load Management Look Like in 2026? Launched in 2021, Xcel Energy has offered EV customers multiple programs and pricing options, attracting thousands of participants. Opinion Dynamics will present learnings from Xcel participant research while the utility will share the program insights it’s using to develop its 2024–2026 managed charging programs, expected to scale to 45,000+ participants. Plus, we’ll discuss ways to think holistically about the tradeoffs of dynamic vs. static program offerings, and how to optimize for both customer and grid outcomes.
Conference Co-Chair
Conference Co-Chair
Conference Co-Chair
Co-Chair Robin Maslowski
Co-Chair Corey Wheat
Brian Lusher
Greg Sidorov
Co-Chair Rich Hasselman
Co-Chair Debyani Ghosh
Jeremy Stewart
Christina Carlson
Co-Chair Kevin Knight
Co-Chair Melissa Leymon
Wendy Brummer
Abby Shelton
Beth Reid
Co-Chair Olivia Patterson
Co-Chair
Eamonn Urey
Shane O’Quinn
Kessie Avseikova
Beth Strasburger
Adam Gardels
Gary Smith
Kelsey Lawhead
Ethan Poppe
Lars-Olaf Hoeger
Kohil Vyas
Ali Ipakchi
Owen Tyrrell
Dan Cooper
Crystal Enoch
Kristin Baker
Eric Bell, PhD
Candice Potter
John Powers
Randy Robinson
Co-Chair Uros Simovic
Moderator Kevin Schwain
Paul Wassink
Melissa Chan
Mark Braby
Co-Chair Michael Brown
Co-Chair Tom Breare
Moderator Peter Steele-Mosey
Maral Kassabian
Daniel Carr
Justin Malecki
Co-Chair Chris Ashley
Co-Chair Joel Schofield
Brad Mantz
Beth Reid
Chair Jonathan Hoechst
Moderator Maddie Emerson
Jessica King
Shane King
Co-Chair Allison Hamilton
Co-Chair Richard Barone
Hilary Polis
Sunil Goyal
Jay Oliver