Estimating Demand Response Load Impacts: Evaluation of BaselineLoad Models for Non-Residential Buildings in California

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Abstract

Both Federal and California state policymakers areincreasingly interested in developing more standardized and consistentapproaches to estimate and verify the load impacts of demand responseprograms and dynamic pricing tariffs. This study describes a statisticalanalysis of the performance of different models used to calculate thebaseline electric load for commercial buildings participating in ademand-response (DR) program, with emphasis onthe importance of weathereffects. During a DR event, a variety of adjustments may be made tobuilding operation, with the goal of reducing the building peak electricload. In order to determine the actual peak load reduction, an estimateof what the load would have been on the day of the event without any DRactions is needed. This baseline load profile (BLP) is key to accuratelyassessing the load impacts from event-based DR programs and may alsoimpact payment settlements for certain types of DR programs. We testedseven baseline models on a sample of 33 buildings located in California.These models can be loosely categorized into two groups: (1) averagingmethods, which use some linear combination of hourly load values fromprevious days to predict the load on the event, and (2) explicit weathermodels, which use a formula based on local hourly temperature to predictthe load. The models were tested both with and without morningadjustments, which use data from the day of the event to adjust theestimated BLP up or down.Key findings from this study are: - The accuracyof the BLP model currently used by California utilities to estimate loadreductions in several DR programs (i.e., hourly usage in highest 3 out of10 previous days) could be improved substantially if a morning adjustmentfactor were applied for weather-sensitive commercial and institutionalbuildings. - Applying a morning adjustment factor significantly reducesthe bias and improves the accuracy of all BLP models examined in oursample of buildings. - For buildings with low load variability, all BLPmodels perform reasonably well in accuracy. - For customer accounts withhighly variable loads, we found that no BLP model produced satisfactoryresults, although averaging methods perform best in accuracy (but notbias). These types of customers are difficult to characterize withstandard BLP models that rely on historic loads and weather data.Implications of these results for DR program administrators andpolicymakersare: - Most DR programs apply similar DR BLP methods tocommercial and industrial sector customers. The results of our study whencombined with other recent studies (Quantum 2004 and 2006, Buege et al.,2006) suggests that DR program administrators should have flexibility andmultiple options for suggesting the most appropriate BLP method forspecific types of customers.

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