PLMA Announces 2003 Demand Response Awards Winners.

Energy Editors/Business Editors

JUPITER, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 19, 2004

The Peak Load Management Alliance (PLMA) today announced the winners of their 2003 Demand Response Annual Awards. The presentations of the Awards will be at the PLMA Annual Awards Luncheon during the "Demand Response: Paradigm Lost or Paradigm Reloaded" conference in San Diego, California March 24-25, 2004.

Blackouts, shortages, price spikes and more have been big news in the past few years. PLMA was formed as an alliance of organizations of suppliers of electricity, load shedding systems manufacturers, consultants, research groups and trade associations to promote the concepts and technologies of reducing demand for electricity in response to pricing signals in the marketplace.

"There are a lot of innovative and creative load reduction programs and studies being operated this year," remarked Elliot Boardman, Executive Director of PLMA. "These awards are a way for PLMA to recognize and highlight the best programs."

The Award Winners and a description of why they were chosen follows:

Outstanding Achievement by an Electricity Supplier Award -

MIDAMERICAN ENERGY 

PLMA is pleased to announce that MidAmerican Energy has received the 2003 Outstanding Achievement Award for its efforts in the demand response area during 2003. Utilizing equipment produced by Itron, Inc., the program has just completed its fourth consecutive successful season. The program's 125 participating commercial and industrial customers collectively represent 156MW of interruptible load, and during the three events called in the summer of 2003, reduced peak demand by 3 1/2 percent, helping to preserve reserve margins and avoid costly MAPP penalties. As a result of this program, MidAmerican Energy avoided setting a new peak throughout the period.

PLMA selected the program for recognition because of its longevity, giving the fledgling demand response market an opportunity to test, incorporate and demonstrate multiple program design features that are critical to success. Such success factors include:

-- close partnership and interaction between MidAmerican Energy

and its vendor, Itron;

-- combination of mandatory and voluntary programs (i.e. choice

for users); and

-- clear and near real-time information needed to allow customers

to make informed decisions.

Outstanding Achievement by an End-User Award - DOLLAR TREE STORES

PLMA is pleased to announce that Dollar Tree Stores has received an award for its outstanding efforts in the demand response area during 2003. During the year, Dollar Tree took advantage of demand response program offerings in California, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire that helped offset capital investments in advanced state-of-the-art web-enabled energy management systems that helped curtail loads and save the company thousands of dollars in operating costs. These systems were remotely managed from Dollar Tree's Virginia headquarters.

Over the past few years, Dollar Tree has committed nearly $10 million in capital investments to install more than 1000 energy management systems in its stores nationwide. With over 2300 locations throughout the US, Dollar Tree expects to add another 400-500 stores during 2004. It has plans to equip many of those stores with energy management systems and demand response functionality. With that kind of commitment to energy management and demand response, Dollar Tree serves as an ideal role model and ambassador for demand response. Working with a wide variety of equipment vendors, Dollar Tree has mapped the complexities of each individual system into a nationwide network that is being managed and controlled from one central location. Their knowledge of the complexities of such systems can be a useful benchmark for other national chain retail establishments.

Dollar Tree has exhibited a truly commendable level of commitment toward making demand response a viable resource for the end-user. PLMA congratulates Dollar Tree on winning this award.

Outstanding Research Award - ELECTRICITY PRICING RESEARCH

PROJECT (EDRP)

PLMA is pleased to announce that a joint effort of California's three investor-owned utilities (Pacific Gas & Electric, San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison) has received an award for their outstanding efforts in the demand response area during 2003. Over the past year, the utilities, in collaboration with the California Energy Commission and the Public Utilities Commission, have implemented this pilot program targeted to small and medium commercial customers who are less than 200 kW in demand.

The program includes several types of innovative rate treatments, including Critical Peak Pricing (CPP) options, a Time-of-Use (TOU) rate, and an "Information Only" rate. The Electricity Pricing Research Project (EPRP) represents an innovation in electricity pricing, testing the validity of using economic signals to bring about meaningful and measurable amounts of demand response. The average impact was a nearly 20% reduction in residential electricity usage during peak demand periods when the prices are very high. The EPRP is helping to determine the feasibility of deploying an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) to a market segment that typically does not have the necessary telemetry to participate in demand response programs.

On a parallel path, the utilities are also implementing a similar pilot effort to large commercial and industrial customers. Evaluations are being conducted right now and the results are not yet available. However, these efforts could result in wider acceptance of demand response and real-time pricing programs among the large energy user customer classes.

This consortium has demonstrated a level of innovation that will help pave the way for demand response to be a normal part of consumer and business energy practices. PLMA congratulates PG&E, SDG&E and SCE on winning this award.

International Cooperation Award - PROGRESS ENERGY FLORIDA

The Progress Energy Florida company started to run its Demand Response Opportunity Pilot in January 2003. The pilot runs through June of 2004 and is being assisted by the University of Florida and Polytechnic University of Valencia Spain.

The company is using a system developed by the universities with the acronym of FRIENDS - Flexible, Reliable, and Intelligent Electrical eNergy Delivery Systems. With the pilot customers, event tests, interactive software and metering, and training procedures have been designed and developed. It is being used to determine the feasibility of a full-scale program of voluntary demand response in Progress Energy Florida - the first time any such program has been used in the state.

One especially innovative aspect to the program is the international support it has received, and the international nature of the project. Along with the universities from the US and Spain that are involved, the FRIENDS program is a global and comprehensive initiative that has received funding from the International Energy Agency. There are 30+ engineering university researchers and 16 companies involved with FRIENDS worldwide, including Progress Energy Florida. The lessons learned in Florida may be applied to demand response programs throughout the world.

For these reasons, PLMA is proud to give Progress Energy Florida the International Cooperation Award for the Demand Response Opportunity Program.

Outstanding Individual Contribution Award -

ALISON SILVERSTEIN, FERC 

Traditionally, the FERC has not delved much into demand response, sticking with traditional wholesale electric generation and transmission regulation matters. However, under Chairman Pat Wood and fellow Commissioners William Massey and Nora Brownell, the FERC has been very supportive of including a demand response in electric markets. The support is now wide and explicit from its commissioners, and includes policy statements and speeches; including demand response in regulatory orders and tariffs; sponsorship of meetings and of projects; hiring of FERC's first demand response expert staff; and a range of internal actions to change FERC's internal culture to be friendly to demand response. These achievements were implemented under the leadership of Alison Silverstein.

Wholesale and retail electric markets must have regulations that allow demand response to participate; otherwise technologies and programs to enable a demand response are meaningless if market rules do not allow a demand response. Providers of demand response services must have regulations that allow an adequate cash flow. As the nation's sole regulatory authority over wholesale electric markets, having FERC endorse, encourage, and order demand response is essential. As Senior Policy Advisor to the Chairman, Alison Silverstein's efforts and technical advice have been crucial for translating the Commission's demand response views into specific Commission actions.

For these efforts and achievements, PLMA is pleased to present Ms. Silverstein with this award.

For further information, contact Elliot Boardman at 561/575-1788 or [e-mail].