Flexible loads for Intermittent Renewable generation Management

The Intermittent Renewable Management Pilot - Phase 2 was designed to study the feasibility of distributed demand-side resources to participate into the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) wholesale market as proxy demand resources. The pilot study focused on understanding the issues related with direct participation of third-parties and customers including customer acceptance; market transformation challenges (wholesale market, technology); technical and operational feasibility; and value to demand response resource owners and the utility on providing an enabling mechanism for DR resources into the wholesale markets. Four participants successfully engaged in the pilot. We provide the description of the pilot, participant performance results, costs and value to participants as well as outline some of the issues encountered through the pilot. Results show that participants chose to participate mainly with storage and the value of CAISO settlements were significantly lower than the capacity payments provided by the utility as incentive payments.