Load Management at Home: Advantages and Drawbacks of Some ‘active Demand Side' Options

The Supergen HiDEF (Highly Distributed Energy Future) project focuses on possibilities for decentralising five features of energy systems: resources, control, network infrastructure, participation (markets and commercial arrangements) and policy. This paper concentrates on participation, and the practicalities of an ‘active demand side’. It examines four potential means of altering network and retail arrangements, with reference to technologies and customer roles in each. These are: supplier obligation to reduce demand; static tariffs for peak reduction; dynamic tariffs for load management with variable supply; and continuous load-balancing through dynamic demand. Each of these offers something to the utility; what might it offer the customer, and what customer issues might it raise? The paper suggests a framework for evaluating ‘active demand’ options in terms of what they offer to small-scale end-users. Examples are derived from international residential load management programmes, and from the demand response literature. They are discussed mostly in terms of application to the situation in the UK.