CHICAGO, Sept. 25, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Clean Urban Energy (CUE), an energy storage and smart grid technology provider has implemented price-responsive thermal mass control to reduce peak demand, to alleviate grid stress, and to create revenue for commercial buildings through Economic Load Response in the PJM territory.
With the introduction of FERC Order 745, building customers have had a powerful incentive to implement CUE's load-shifting technology. The Order states that load reductions provide the same benefit to the grid as generation, and therefore demand-side resources and supply-side resources should be compensated equally for their contributions. Traditionally, demand response has been largely utility-controlled, with marginal economic benefits for participants. Now, the reward is much greater. Building customers save money by using less expensive electricity, then receive demand response revenues from the reductions. In April 2012, PJM, who serves markets such as Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and Baltimore, became the first grid operator to implement the Order.
Also new to PJM, is economic demand response in the day-ahead market. Customers are now able to plan for load shifting a day in advance. This gives building operators the opportunity to manipulate their own building load profiles and participate in demand response in a way that creates revenue, but does not impact tenant comfort. CUE's dynamic load-shifting technology uses the building's existing HVAC system to move cooling load from the pricey afternoon hours to early morning and pre-occupancy hours, when prices are significantly lower. The web-based platform not only nominates demand response bids into the market, but it also achieves these shifts seamlessly and automatically every day to meet thermal comfort requirements in the most economical way possible.
Using CUE technology, building operators subcool their buildings during early morning, non-occupancy hours, when electric grid prices are lower, electric generation is more efficient, and chillers operate more efficiently. Early morning cool temperatures are in effect stored in the thermal mass of the buildings, so that throughout the day, the cooled building mass continued to cool the space, leading to reduced on-peak electricity requirements for HVAC systems. Across the CUE portfolio, this resulted in over 500MWh of virtual generation during peak demand hours for July and August alone.
Remarkably, CUE's building customers capitalized on their load reductions, earning tens of thousands of dollars in revenues, with no noticeable impact to occupant comfort. "Anyone can shift load," said CUE CEO Phil Bomrad. "The science is to predict hourly cooling requirements for a building, identify arbitrage opportunities, and automatically move load for financial gain-- without sacrificing tenant comfort or productivity."
With this summer's unusually hot weather, many grid operators saw new peak load records as a result of increased HVAC load. PJM has reported that this summer's peak demand has exceeded the organization's 2012 forecast by about 2%. In Chicago, with the recent closings of the Crawford and Fisk coal-fired generating plants, peak demand has become an even more critical issue.
Grid operators have been looking towards energy storage solutions, such as battery and flywheel technologies to alleviate congestion. However, high capital cost and siting restraints have limited production. CUE's solution, however, relies on existing infrastructure. "Thermal mass already exists on a multi-MW scale in large metropolitan areas across the country and has the potential to be a valuable storage medium for the electric grid," said Bomrad. "It is a national opportunity that rewards both the electric grid and building owners."
About CUE
CUE is a technology provider that integrates grid operations with buildings operations by leveraging the inherent thermal mass of a buildings structure to store energy and strategically discharge the energy at optimal times throughout the day. By modeling a building, the CUE platform understands how a building will respond to weather conditions and integrates energy market data to automatically optimize when a facility uses energy. The benefit is a significant cost reduction for building owners without compromising tenant comfort, and load management platform for utilities and energy suppliers. Clean Urban Energy turns your building into a battery™.
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