DRRC Collaboration Opportunities

Although the Demand Response Research Center’s (DRRC) primary focus is to conduct and disseminate near-term research that advances demand response (DR) in California, many of the issues and problems that we face are common to utilities, regulators and service providers everywhere. The two DRRC research projects on rates and incentives, and valuing demand response (described elsewhere in this newsletter), illustrate the commonality of DR problems in California with other jurisdictions.

When the DRRC was established, there was clear recognition that solutions to DR problems would often require multi-institutional and collaborative relationships. Two of the DRRC’s five principal objectives emphasize this fact. As a result, many of the DRRC’s research projects have been structured to encourage collaboration and outside participation on several levels:

• Technical Advisory Groups (TAG)—Each DRRC research project includes a TAG with 6 to 12 expert practitioners drawn from utility, regulatory, customer, and industry groups nationwide. TAGs can play a key role in numerous activities such as evaluating research proposals, providing feedback on related work, linking research results with the marketplace, providing technical guidance to researchers, and evaluating research products.
• Financial Collaboration with the DRRC—While the DRRC establishes a budget for each research project, the scope is often tailored to address California-specific interests and product needs. The DRRC encourages joint funding where opportunities exist to broaden or improve the research effort. Projects addressing conceptual or product issues outside the immediate interests of California will also be considered, especially when they address potential long-term DR concerns more fully. Collaboration with the DRRC will often provide the ability to directly influence the project scope, objectives, tasks, and schedule.
• DRRC Financial Collaboration with Other Organizations—The DRRC is also interested in leveraging its research dollars by collaborating on other institutional research projects. Our areas of interest are outlined in the DRRC research plan which can be located on the DRRC web site.

Examples of existing DRRC collaboration efforts include:

• Pacific Gas &Electric(PG&E) –CPP pilot of Automated Demand Response.
• Southern California Edison (SCE)–Thermal mass project.
• Electric Power Research Institute Solutions–analysis of Auto-DR.
• Demand Response Coordinating Committee (DRCC) –participation in International Energy Agency DR efforts.
• U.S. Department Of Energy (DOE)–Evaluating links between advanced controls for energy efficiency and DR.
• New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)–Evaluating DR strategies in new building projects (New York Times building).

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If you are interested in pursuing collaborative research efforts with the DRRC, contact:

Mary Ann Piette
MAPiette@lbl.gov
510-486-6286

Roger Levy
RogerL47@aol.com
916-487-0227

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