The business case for a consumer portal to implement flexible pricing, consumer services and demand response programs

Industry developments and previous work have demonstrated the need for a consumer portal that provides a communications gateway between energy providers and consumers for energy service functions. The functions enabled by the consumer portal will help the entire energy market work more efficiently and achieve a wide variety of economies. Previous failures of many energy service functions demonstrate the need for a standardized architecture and gateway to allow technology providers to develop equipment and applications that can achieve widespread deployment. This paper focuses on the business case for the consumer portal demand response functions. Many different functions have been identified for the consumer portal (advanced meter reading, load monitoring and control, equipment diagnostics, outage detection and notification, theft detection, power quality services, etc.) but flexible pricing and demand response applications are seen as the dominant applications from a business case point of view. Example cases from EdF (France) and the California demand response initiative are used to evaluate the business case for a standardized consumer portal interface. EdF is developing a new metering specification that will include advanced communications functionality that can be used to implement load control and flexible pricing. The State of California is in the process of an Advanced Metering Initiative that is evaluating consumer response to flexible pricing for demand control. The overall society benefits of demand response and flexible pricing applications are tremendous. Full realization of these benefits in a market structure requires a standardized definition of the consumer interface allowing flexible technology development. These two case studies illustrate the benefits that can be obtained and help provide the justification for cooperation to develop a standardized interface.