Can smaller loads be profitably engaged in power system services?

This paper summarizes a presentation to be given at the IEEE Power and Energy Society 2011 General Meeting, in the panel session “Business Models for Demand-side Energy Services: Economics, Challenges, and Opportunities.” The paper discusses some of the tradeoffs between price response versus direct load control, and using small versus large loads to deliver aggregated system services. It also discusses some of the challenges that will need to be addressed if grid cyberinfrastructure is to be employed to economically deliver grid services with aggregated loads. In the final section, the paper presents a few novel load control strategies developed by the author and his collaborators that could significantly reduce the cost to deliver fast and precise services from responsive loads.