Unlocking the Smart Grid Through Building Codes and Communication Standards: Code Opportunities to Increase DR Transactions

摘要

The smart grid and the technologies embodied within it will be a key investment inbringing our electricity system into the 21st century. With these technologies, we can unlock adiversity of demand-side management (DSM) mechanisms, including demand response (DR)transactions, behavior based programs, semi and/or permanent load shifting, deeper energyefficiency savings, and greater renewables firming capacity. However, a challenging chicken andegg market failure stands in the way of realizing the full benefits. Broader participation in smartgrid markets will not occur until there is a significant investment in infrastructure that will allowseamless transactions. On the other hand, infrastructure investments will not occur until there iswider participation in DR transactions and customers’ responses to DR signals are classified withmore certainty. Building codes and communication standards (C&S) can be an effective solutionfor overcoming this market barrier. C&S can facilitate participation in smart grid markets byincreasing prevalence of enabled and/or connected loads and making the smart grid system morecoherent and reliable thereby making DR transactions easier for all market actors. This paperdelves into four sections related to C&S deployment of the smart grid: (1) key triggers forsuccessful code adoption of smart grid measures, (2) evaluation of market pathways with andwithout communication standards, (3) opportunities within building codes, and (4) the state ofthe union of appliance standards. We conclude with a call to action to industry, regulators,manufacturers, and utilities to play a role in expanding C&S efforts to accelerate the smart griddeployments and realize its benefits.