In the News
NYC buildings conserved to take pressure off grid during heatThe Washington Post
DAVID B. CARUSO
Associated Press Writer
July 19, 2006
NEW YORK -- As air conditioners devoured a near-record amount of electricity Tuesday, engineers monitoring New York City's power grid sent out an alert: The system urgently needed more juice. The call prompted an immediate response.
Grocery stores dimmed their lights. Hospitals switched on emergency generators. At one 35-story skyscraper in Times Square, managers darkened the blazing billboards that illuminate Broadway, even during the day.
By 1 p.m., those efforts had reduced the load on the system by an estimated 650 megawatts _ enough power for about 650,000 homes.
"It gave us the relief we needed in our peak hour," said Ken Klapp, a spokesman for the New York Independent System Operator, the entity that controls the state's power grid.
The dramatic conservation effort was no spontaneous act of altruism.
Under growing programs now in place in several states, grid operators are paying select customers to conserve energy during periods of extreme stress on the system.
Some big users of electricity, like factories and college campuses, can get checks worth tens of thousands of dollars for guaranteeing power-savings for a few hours on the few days a year when the grid is stretched to the limit like it did this week during the vicious heat wave.
Without the cushion provided by the programs, power companies might have to cut voltage or resort to rolling blackouts to forcibly shed load from an overtaxed system. Another alternative would be to fire up additional power plants, which can be expensive and polluting.
Klapp said it makes more sense to encourage conservation. This year, companies in the New York ISO's "demand response" programs have committed to saving up to 1,470 megawatts in a pinch.
"That's equivalent to the largest power plants in the state," Klapp said.
Demand response programs aren't for the average homeowner; participants need to prove they can deliver fairly substantial savings, which means advanced monitoring of how much energy their buildings consume. A small number of specialty companies have emerged to help implement the program.
In five years, Boston-based EnerNOC Inc. has signed up about 150 clients, ranging from grocery stores, to car-crushing operations, to state universities in California.
From its command centers, the company can monitor and adjust the electrical use of its customers, including dimming lights, adjusting the air conditioning and turning on emergency generators.
"There is nonessential load all over the place that you can turn off for a few hours if you're paying attention," said chief executive Tim Healy. "Its like finding a new 50 megawatt or 100 megawatt power plant."
The challenge is making adjustments people won't notice.
In New York, ConsumerPowerline sends its consultants to clients that include Macy's department store to identify subtle power savings, like adjusting the speed on ventilation fans or cooling buildings earlier in the day, before electricity use reaches its peak.
"Say one office building has 10 elevators. You can turn off two of them. People in the building might not even notice it's going on," said Reena Russell, the company's chief officer of market development.
Other adjustments have a higher profile.
When the New York ISO called for a power down at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, the managers of 750 7th Avenue switched off the dazzling electric billboards that hang over the sidewalks on three sides of the building. In 15 minutes, with the help of other adjustments, the building had reduced its power use by 250 kilowatts, enough to run between 200 and 250 homes.
The building's manager, Hines Interest Limited Partnership, will split a payment with ConsumerPowerline for the power-down, which lasted until 10 p.m. But building director of engineering, Daniel Pugliese, said the money wasn't the firm's main motivation for participating.
"We're doing this for one reason, to help out Con-Ed and help out the grid," he said. New Yorkers, after all, remember the last time the grid failed: a 2003 blackout that darkened much of the northeast.
Fear of a repeat is one reason enrollment in demand response programs has grown. Ken McDonnell, a spokesman for grid operator ISO New England, said it can now call on about 660 megawatts of guaranteed reduction, up from 100 megawatts a few years ago.
This week's heat wave didn't produce a failure like 2003, although electricity use records fell left and right. New England used a record 27,374 megawatts of electricity between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. on Tuesday. Some California utilities also issued a call for electrical load reduction this week because of extra demand due to heat. New York set its new record of 32,624 megawatts on Monday, and would have easily exceeded that Tuesday if its conservation program hadn't been implemented.
Klapp said the system would have survived this week's heat, even without the savings, but the operators were wary about cutting it close.
"You always want to have that cushion in your back pocket in case a generator gives out or a transmission wire trips."