THE POWER OF BUILDINGS

Viridity, ConEd Solutions Take On Demand Response 2.0; Viridity and ConEd Solutions launch a commercial-scale effort to turn buildings into energy market resources.
Jeff St. John, February 24, 2012 (Greentech Media)

"Demand response -- turning down building power loads to shave peak grid demand -- sometimes gets split into 1.0 and 2.0 versions…[DR 2.0] comes when buildings can lower their peak power use not only to respond to utility emergency calls (DR 1.0), but to actually bid their power reduction into energy markets…But to manage it, this DR 2.0 technology has to stretch from the individual building, all the way to the energy markets where blocks of power are bought and sold every day...Viridity Energy and big energy services company ConEdison Solutions…[have built a platform to do that and thereby offer] building owners a chance to lower power bills and bring in new energy revenues, all at little to no cost.

"The program has…a big target market, in the form of ConEd Solutions’ energy services (ESCO) and commodity energy trading customers…As a sister company of New York utility Consolidated Edison, ConEd Solutions is comparable to Honeywell and Johnson Control in terms of ESCO work, and competes against the likes of Constellation Energy and Dominion Power in the business of buying and selling power for big customers."

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"Viridity and ConEd Solutions bring a distinct new challenge to the competition for the title of the first commercial-scale demand response 2.0 project…[against] EnerNOC, Comverge, Constellation Energy, Johnson Controls, Honeywell…[which are] working on projects that link building control systems with energy markets ready to pay a premium for fast-responding, reliable power shed…

"…ConEd Solutions’ big customer base gives it an advantage…[and] its energy commodity trading business [offers] more insight into how to better manage customer energy use to lower their rates and bills…Viridity has also proven its ability to handle both the emergency capacity demand response markets, which pay customers a monthly fee in exchange for a promise to cut power drop a few times a year, and the energy, or economic, demand response markets, where customers actually bid power reductions into energy markets…"