Regulatory revision and assessment of demand initiatives in Spain, France, Great Britain, New York and California

Abstract

The present document is aimed to review the regulatory and practical status of different Demand Response initiatives carried out in different States as it is considered to be a pillar in the future development of the power sector. The study will help to understand what are the main issues to be solved in the years to come in each system to let demand-side participants hold a more important and active role in the wholesale electricity markets. This Master Thesis has been developed at the department of ‘Energy Policy and Regulation’ at Iberdrola S.A. The main motivation of this project was to have a clear feedback on how demand response programs are likely to evolve in the studied areas and how energy policies regarding demand-side management may be developed from a regulatory point of view to benefit the power sector itself. Thus, the conclusions of this study will help Iberdrola to have a basis on how to face high-level regulatory discussions on this topic and to be ready for new changes with respect to the introduction of new forms of demand response programs. The States selected for this study are Spain, France, Great Britain, New York and California as they are part of Iberdrola’s businesses area and they represent different stages of implementation of demand-response mechanisms attending to diverse operational and contextual conditions. The methodology followed consists on a preliminary revision of the main available DRP options used worldwide. Then, each State has been categorized according to its generation mix, networks status, former experiences on DR, etc. so that a firm framework is given to better understand the decisions made on each country. Later, the main initiatives available on each State have been analyzed in detail following a four-criterion qualitative methodology, which is aimed to rank the main points that are understood to be crucial to achieve a proper and equitable implementation of demand response in the electricity markets. The previously mentioned procedure grades each State from A (best) to D (worst) attending to the extent customers are involved and the legality of figures like the aggregator; the variety of demandresponse products offered and their general requirements; what are the measurement and verification procedures; which are the financing options and how risks are supported by each agent. This method shows the real grade DR is active on each State so that it is easy to identify the main points to be improved and also to compare the situation within the aforementioned regions. To conclude, each State will be assessed with the main potential enhancements to better involve demand-side participants on existing and future demand response programs. As an advance, this study has identified that the grade of implementation of DRPs strongly depends on the operational and technical characteristics of each power system, going for instance from Spain where DR is barely deployed due to overcapacity in generation and overinvestment in networks to States as California where the variety of products is huge as cheaper ways to manage imbalances are needed and a large amount of renewable resources requires to be accommodated in an efficient way. On top of that, it has been perceived that programs as capacity markets, neglect the differences between supply and demand in the design process so that very few capacity is allocated to demand response agents. Finally, in those States where DR enjoys better legal conditions and wider variety of products, educational campaigns are crucial to increase the still low number of participants, warning customers about the benefits DR encloses. However, policymakers need to keep in mind that freedom of choice and final decisions should always depend on end-customers, as this is the only real way to empower consumers.