A potent partnership.Byline: The Register-Guard People may disagree about the best long-term Long-term Three or more years. In the context of accounting, more than 1 year. long-term 1. Of or relating to a gain or loss in the value of a security that has been held over a specific length of time. Compare short-term. strategy to deal with the Northwest's escalating electricity demands and its overtaxed grid of transmission lines. There is consensus, however, that commercial, governmental and residential electricity users have a crucial role to play in the power supply and pricing sweepstakes sweepstakes, contest or race, usually a horse race, on which a lottery is run. Prizes are awarded to the holders of winning tickets. In the case of a horse race, the draw is made from the names of all the horses entered in the race and vast numbers of blanks. . Lessons learned by the Eugene Water & Electric Board and other local utilities during the regional electrical supply crisis in 2001 suggest that utilities and their customers could become indispensable partners in power management. One promising approach to this partnership involves a real-time power pricing and supply program called "demand response." Demand response enables the quick, automatic reduction of energy use in buildings, industrial facilities and homes following a spike A burst of extra voltage in a power line that lasts only a few nanoseconds. See power surge, power swell, sag and surge suppression. (jargon) spike - To defeat a selection mechanism by introducing a (sometimes temporary) device that forces a specific result. in the cost of power or an emergency on the electric grid. Spike in the cost of power? Don't customers pay the same rate for power throughout the billing cycle Billing cycle The time elapsed between billing periods for goods sold or services rendered. ? Actually, no. Wholesale electricity costs are dynamic and tend to shoot up when electricity demand is unusually high or when supply is unusually low. During a few of the hottest days of the year in California, for example, the wholesale price can be 10 times the normal price or more. But most customers have no way of knowing when electricity is unusually expensive and therefore have no incentive to cut back their usage during those times. In addition, when peak demand or an emergency outage out·age n. 1. A quantity or portion of something lacking after delivery or storage. 2. A temporary suspension of operation, especially of electric power. threaten the stability of the regional power grid, demand response partners could rapidly reduce electrical consumption. Some experts on the electrical grid believe that a system with automatic demand response could have avoided the blackout A complete loss of power. See brownout. in the eastern U.S. and Canada on Aug. 14, 2003. Recent experiments with demand response programs suggest that nationwide, people could save as much as $15 billion annually if they knew when to reduce their demand for the highest-priced power. To succeed, demand response programs need state-of-the-art infrastructure, including "smart" electric meters, dependable real-time communication between utilities and their customers and ongoing public education programs that help customers devise effective strategies for conserving con·serve v. con·served, con·serv·ing, con·serves v.tr. 1. a. To protect from loss or harm; preserve: electricity. Savings from demand response programs present countless possibilities for meaningful and socially significant incentives. Policy makers could consider supporting renewable energy Renewable energy utilizes natural resources such as sunlight, wind, tides and geothermal heat, which are naturally replenished. Renewable energy technologies range from solar power, wind power, and hydroelectricity to biomass and biofuels for transportation. projects, funding bill-paying help for low-income customers or a host of other options. Demand response programs offer electrical customers a tangible reward for conserving at a time that is most beneficial to power providers. Such win-win conservation partnerships deserve serious study by all local utilities. |
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