Aggregated Load for Energy…

Aggregated Load for Energy Storage

Energy Storage includes more than electrons.  A huge percentage of the energy used in Ontario is for heating and cooling buildings.  Instead of creating yet another incentive program for thermal energy, if proponents were able to aggregate electric load to take advantage of the IESO's Class A customer rate and thereby access the real-time electricity rate (HOEP), then storage, both electrical and thermal, could be made economic.  By encouraging storage users to use cheap night-time electricity, the transmitters and distributors will reduce costly upgrades, peak demand will be shaved, reducing costly (and GHG intensive) gas peaking production, and LDCs will increase sales of baseload (GHG free) power.  By using market forces instead of incentives, the government will avoid political criticism of costly subsidies.  The advantage to storage will be self regulating, as night-time demand increases, the HOEP will increase and avoid fire-sale trades to New York and Michigan, often at negative rates.

The aggregated load could be controlled by the LDCs similar to Demand Response or just driven by the HOEP.  In essence, with storage, it could be considered dispatchable load.  What is dispatchable load worth?

[Original Comment ID: 207201]