This report presents the findings of Ausgrid’s Power2U two-year Demand Response (DR) program.
Report extract
The Power2U (P2U) Solar and Lighting Incentive project is part of Ausgrid’s Demand Management Innovation Allowance (DMIA) program and was intended to test the effectiveness of using financial incentives to encourage customers, in targeted geographic areas of the Ausgrid network, to install permanent demand reducing technologies such as new solar power systems and energy efficiency lighting upgrades. The DMIA Mechanism is part of the regulatory framework and enables electricity network businesses to conduct research and develop projects to trial new non-network technologies and strategies for reducing or deferring network investment. In addition to the DMIA, the P2U program has also received partner funding from ARENA as part of ARENA’s Advancing Renewables Program and the City of Sydney council.
The conception of the P2U program was motivated by Ausgrid’s forecast of major capital network investments being predominantly (around 90%) replacement driven. While demand management is traditionally used to defer demand-driven network investment, there are few (if any) examples of demand management being used to defer replacement/retirement-driven network investment.
More specifically, the P2U program was designed to test and provide learnings around whether technologies that provide longer duration energy reductions, such as rooftop solar PV and energy efficient lighting, can be incentivised in a manner that is cost-effective and at sufficient scale to enable the deferral of a replacement-driven capital project. We tested the outcomes of the P2U project against the requirements of a use case demand management project with analysis conducted to understand whether there was higher take up of the incentives offered by the program in particular customer segments, by program area, industry category, suburb and 11kV feeder levels.