Consumer & Energy Services Engagement
What is it?
- As technologies become cheaper and more broadly available, there is increasing interest from consumers and third-parties to interact with the grid.
- Engagement may be driven by potential cost-savings, potential profits, environmental reasons, or reliability purposes, yet leveraging consumer demand and supply can benefit the grid.
- The grid should evolve to improve and facilitate interactions between itself, consumers, and third parties to realize and maximize potential resilience and economic co-benefits.
- Components of an accessible grid include a user-friendly interface and standardized data availability to simplify information sharing and connectivity and to facilitate automated participation of agents, software, and third-party applications.
More technically speaking – industry terms to know:
- Prosumer: Refers to someone who both produces and consumes electricity. An example is a household with solar panels that both uses and delivers electricity to the grid.
The Grid Today
Historically, electricity customers, whether residential, commercial, or industrial, have had a mostly hands-off relationship with the grid. Traditional electric service has provided a high quality and reliable service, with end use demand being fairly steady and passive in nature. Electric use for most customers remains a monthly bill to pay and forget about.
Customers with either larger load or specific energy interests have started engaging with their electric supplier more, whether by entering into demand response programs or installing solar and taking advantage of net metering arrangements. Certain technologies, like home management systems, are becoming more popular in new homes and allow consumers to become more energy efficient and aware of their electricity uses.
For a Modern Grid
A range of new products, services, and devices are becoming increasingly available to consumers to enable them to better manage their electric use and costs. Consumers are choosing to interact with the grid more and energy service providers, like third-party aggregators, require better interfaces and market structures for engagement. Concurrently, grid operators need improved visibility at a more granular level into electricity needs and end uses. A modern grid should be set up to integrate available technologies, interested customers, grid operators, and dynamic signals and controls to facilitate grid interactivity, grid flexibility, and provide customers with requested services.
Technology Examples
Explore examples of consumer & energy services engagement in these technologies:
