CDM: Conservation

My approach is to take long-term demand trends and extend them. For the past few years that has meant expected demand to be flat.

My cynical view of the bureaucrats approach is that they inflate future demand expectations in order to achieve conservation targets. Since that 2006 directive from the minister, demand has declined, but there is no evidence peak demand is being curtailed more rapidly than all demand (the average and minimum annual demands are down more than the peak).

I am not saying the long-term decline in per capita consumption is not due to conservation efforts - but most are due to national or international efficiency improvements, appliance regulation, building codes, etc.

Things that were going on for years everywhere and are extremely difficult to measure (an excellent article on the challenges is here).

Regardless, no growth is expected in my LTEP, nor is a change in demand patterns expected.

The calculator uses figures that come from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation NERC quickly combined with this from the OPA:

From 2006 to 2011, conservation programs have seen an investment of $2 billion

NERC | Summer ReliabilityAssessment | 2013

The dispatchable loads bid into the market and are dispatched off like any resource. This program has a total capacity of roughly 900 MW. The DR3 program contractsloadsthat are dispatched off the system based on the supply cushion—the difference between demand and supply. This program has a capacity of 400 MW. One other program (Peaksaver) provides an additional 160 MW of capacity. Although the demand response total capacity is roughly 1,460 MW, the effective capacity is just under 700 MW due to program restrictions and market participant actions.None ofthe IESO’s demand response programs are used for ancillary services.

The math, using $2 billion over 6 years for 1460 MW of capacity works out to about $230,000 per MW of capacity.