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HydroVision International Open New Window
Denver, CO
July 23 – 26, 2013

HydroVision International is the premier event for hydro professionals to network, share best practices, and view the most comprehensive collection of product and service providers in the industry.

Event Hashtag: #HydroVisionIntl
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Energy Efficiency

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The electricity industry must maintain reliable and affordable service for customers in the face of growing power demands. Efficiency is a resource that can help address this challenge by reducing the need to generate new electricity and instead use power that is already available.

Research can facilitate a market for efficiency by assessing, testing, and demonstrating new technologies to accelerate their adoption into utility programs. Understanding the impact of electric vehicles in the market as well as customers’ desires and electricity use patterns can also successfully support greater adoption of efficient technologies. With an increase in utilities’ knowledge about the behaviors of their customers and how they use and value electricity, a new age of efficient residential energy use can be achieved.

 
 

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For more information please contact:

Don Kintner
Communications Manager
Phone: 704-595-2506
Email: dkintner@epri.com
Featured Research Demand Response Devices Resources

“Hyper-Efficient” Technologies

EPRI is conducting a multiyear energy efficiency demonstration project focused on six “hyper-efficient” technologies. These technologies may have the potential to reduce electric energy consumption in residential and commercial applications by up to 40 percent for each application. If fully deployed, the technologies could reduce the demand for electric energy between 10 percent and 20 percent.

Demand response (DR) devices, such as programmable communicating thermostats and sensors on air conditioners, remain a critically underused resource in the United States. In addition to customers’ natural reluctance to installing equipment in buildings and homes that interacts with utilities, a key barrier to greater use of DR devices is installation costs incurred by utilities.

Cost and human behavior barriers can be overcome if major energy-consuming appliances and plug loads come ready to support DR programs out of the box, known as “DR-Ready.” EPRI is identifying the capabilities of devices to be considered DR-Ready, defining and refining functional capabilities in a way that describes what a DR-Ready device must be able to accomplish with specific inputs and conditions. Examples include identifying utility programs that are most likely to be supported by device manufacturers and consumers, and developing a roadmap for industry migration to ubiquitous mass-market demand response.