Electricity Traffic Control: A Demand Response System

Professors JAY APT and LESTER LAVE of the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center have provided us with a timely model for the electricity industry.  In an Op-Ed Piece (The New York Times, August 13, 2005) Electricity Traffic Control they offer excellent suggestions on how to keep a power system commercially flying, just as the airline industry does. They suggest the development of an analog to the Airlines Air Traffic Control System.

 

The authors say that "The situation facing managers of the electrical grid is not unlike the anarchy that existed in the skies before the air traffic control system was set up. Just as improvements in air traffic control have reduced the potential for human error, a similar model for electricity generation can create better tools for human operators and mitigate the impossible demands they now face."

 

For developing countries an Electricity Traffic Control System is certainly an impossible dream under a supply side orientation. However, with the development of a Demand Response System, instead of a dream a down to earth opportunity arrives. That is why the Dominican Republic excessive capacity for Demand Response should be at the center of its turnaround strategy to serve both the high end reliability requirements of the Information Society and the low end reliability needs of the Bottom of the Pyramid.

 

With an Electricity Traffic Control System (actually a Demand Response System) power system can be ran at very high reliability at any moment, by letting customers with the lowest interruption costs rationed themselves to keep the system from ever reaching its capacity limits. Dispatching generators and loads a self healing system results. As can be inferred there is a huge market opportunity behind the customer oriented model to keep high interruption business running as much as possible. Developing the concepts of such a system has been and is without doubt part of the aim of the Millennium Hispaniola Group.