New partnership will ensure that the lights stay on.

Connecticut's Department of Public Utility Control (DPUC) is calling for immediate measures to reduce the long-term risk of costly blackouts or brownouts in the state and to reduce the short-term risk of federally mandated rate hikes.

Now two leading energy management firms, ConsumerPowerline and DemandDirect, have answered the call through joint implementation of their "Connecticut Power Reliability Campaign."

According to the DPUC, blackout-threatening power emergencies can occur when events ranging from a failed generator, to heat waves, to storms, sometimes, as we've seen, even of hurricane proportion, place excessive demand and stress on the electricity grid.

While these events happen only about one percent of the time, they result in higher electricity costs, in the form of federally mandated "congestion charges" that are eventually passed on to Connecticut electricity consumers.

To help the state maintain a reliable, cost efficient electricity supply despite growing demand and to "keep the lights on" for consumers during emergencies, ConsumerPowerline, a leading energy asset management firm, and DemandDirect, a leading provider of demand response services in Connecticut, announced a partnership to offer expanded "demand response" opportunities for commercial and industrial energy users to help avoid blackouts--by "giving back" a small portion of their electric power to the grid during a power-grid crisis.

In exchange for this contribution to the state's needs, energy users will be paid for their participation.

Users will also benefit by receiving real-time data on electricity use and pricing, thereby enabling them to "buy and sell smart" in the volatile energy sector.

"This demand response initiative-where energy users shed non-essential electricity in an emergency--answers the state's call for programs to meet Connecticut's electricity supply challenges head-on," said Consumer Powerline president, Mike Gordon.

"Utilities gain a low cost 'electricity supply valve' for safeguarding the system prior to resorting to more expensive 'peaking' power plants that can lead to rate hikes.

" End users, who shed power to achieve needed reliability, earn a premium, yet ratepayers pay far less for this reliability than a comparable power plant would cost them. It's shows brilliant win-win foresight on the part of state legislators and the Connecticut DPUC, and on the part of consumer advocates, to put these emergency markets in place."

Underscoring the need to quickly address the electricity supply issues, the DPUC report indicates that "actions to mitigate the state's peak demand are a near term priority. In 2006, [federally mandated rate] exposures will be most acute in Southwest Connecticut."

"Our whole focus is to get resources into the market as quickly as possible and that is what the DPUC is seeking," Gordon concluded.

To help support the new initiative, ConsumerPowerline will open offices in Stamford and Oxford. Demand Direct will add a Stamford office to its current Oxford headquarters.