By Claire Brown, The New York Times
It’s cold in the U.S. Here’s why some buildings turned down the heat.
And they’ll get paid for it.
It’s part of a strategy called demand response, used by power grid operators during peak energy use, such as cold snaps and heat waves. The idea is to reduce power demand when supply is tight by incentivizing big electricity customers to use less.
That could mean a bitcoin mine shuts down for a few hours. Or a hospital might switch on a backup power generator, reducing the amount of electricity it pulls from the grid. Big box stores might adjust the thermostat, refrigeration, or lighting to save energy.
In theory, if enough large power customers signed up for demand response, an alert from the grid operator would swiftly trigger a significant, voluntary drop in regional electricity use, freeing up power to heat homes and avoid blackouts.
Think of it as subtracting a power plant’s worth of demand instead of adding a power plant’s worth of supply. The companies coordinating all that subtraction are known as virtual power plants.
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