Factors affecting the Load Management Programme

Implementing these techniques/ technologies has substantial financial implications and utilities require considering the following factors before applying them at large scale for the whole market:

1          Cost to the customer to shed and reschedule the load;

2          Tariff variations;

3          Time taken to activate the load response;

4          Losses, if any, in case of reliability problems; and

5          Any losses in production by implementing these programmes.

Therefore, there are several opportunities where utilities could apply these measures without any additional cost or investment. There is important interest within the electricity industry in packaging flexible pricing, load management, energy information, and other services. The extent to that such approaches become cost-effective for little consumers will depend upon the degree of variation in spot prices, the number of hours per year in that spot prices are high, the willingness of customers to pay for energy information and other services, and the ability of manufacturers to continue to lower the cost of communication and energy management systems.

At last, here, we discuss the provisions of the Energy Conservation Act, 2001 and the role of ERCs in helping the utilities take up this activity.