Utilizing Automated Demand Response in commercial buildings as non-spinning reserve product for ancillary services markets

In 2009, a pilot program was conducted to investigate the technical feasibility of bidding non-residential demand response (DR) resources into the California Independent System Operator´s (CAISO) day-ahead ancillary services market as non-spinning reserves product. Three facilities, a retail store, a local government office building, and a bakery, were recruited into the pilot program and moved from automated price responsive programs to CAISO´s participating load program. For each facility, hourly demand, and load curtailment potential were forecasted two days ahead and submitted to the CAISO the day before the trading day as an available resource. These DR resources were optimized against all other generation resources in the CAISO ancillary services market. Each facility was equipped with four-second real time telemetry equipment to ensure resource accountability and visibility to CAISO operators. When CAISO requests DR resources, OpenADR (Open Automated DR) communications infrastructure was utilized to deliver DR signals to the facilities´ energy management and control systems. The pre-programmed DR strategies were triggered without a human in the loop. This paper describes the automated system architecture with detailed description of meter feedback in the DR signaling to maintain demand reduction at the government office building. The results showed that OpenADR infrastructure could be used for some products for the ancillary services market and DR strategies for heating ventilation and air conditioning and lighting provide fast enough response to participate in non-spinning reserve product in the ancillary services market.