Utilities and RTOs Overview
CPower is a full service energy management firm and leading provider of demand response services. The company operates in North America 's largest energy markets including New York, New England, the Mid-Atlantic region (PJM), Texas (ERCOT), California and Ontario. CPower has partnered with utilities, independent system operators (ISOs) / regional transmission organizations (RTOs), municipal power companies (munis) and cooperatives (coops) to deliver reliable, cost effective and flexible demand response, energy efficiency and peak load management resources to these energy markets. CPower offers turnkey energy management programs to meet the particular objectives of its partners, whether those objectives are to fulfill regulatory requirements, increase reliability, moderate electricity prices or meet capacity needs in a cost-effective way.Many utilities and ISO/RTOs have received mandates from public utilities commissions (PUCs), state legislatures, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) or other regulatory bodies requiring that a certain percentage of peak load be managed by energy management programs within a certain timeframe. Many of these utilities, munis and coops have little or no demand response, energy efficiency or peak load management experience. The sales, marketing, registration, metering, monitoring, and deployment of clients participating in energy management programs can be extremely time consuming and a distraction from the utility's core business of electricity supply and distribution. CPower is one of the largest, most experienced energy management providers in North America and provides turnkey demand response and energy efficiency services to help meet these regulatory requirements.
In addition to helping utilities and ISO/RTOs meet their regulatory obligations, CPower's energy management programs can be a powerful tool for addressing rising electricity costs. In the face of rapid load growth, it is more cost effective and faster to procure demand response as a capacity resource than it is to build a new peaking power plant. As a result of electricity scarcity, prices often spike during shortage conditions, and these higher prices are then passed on to the ratepayers. Economic demand response programs, however, can help moderate electricity prices during power shortage conditions.
Demand response resources can provide cost-effective, reliable capacity resources which have a rapid time-to-market. In many ISO/RTOs, such as ISO New England, PJM Interconnection and NYISO, demand resources compete side-by-side with supply resources in the capacity markets. With its vast experience working in these programs, CPower can either help design new capacity markets in which multiple participants can play or deliver turnkey capacity resources to the market. Because of their high quality, low start-up costs, low operating costs and rapid time-to-market, CPower's energy management programs are an effective way to address regulatory requirements, rising electricity prices, and reliability problems.