California utilities tap 40 MW in auction for demand response capacity

Dive Brief:

California utilities have unveiled winning bids in the state's first auction to consider demand response as a capacity resource, with utilities acquiring more than 40 MW from a wide range of vendors, Greentech Media reports.
The state's Demand Response Auction Mechanism (DRAM) was designed to allow a diverse mix of bidders, from customer battery storage to electric vehicles, to participate in wholesale markets for demand management as long as they could amass 100 kW of energy reduction.
Winning bids included demand response stalwarts like EnerNOC and EnergyConnect, as well as storage developer Stem and residential aggregator EnergyHub.

Dive Insight:

California's investor-owned utilities have unveiled the results of the first DRAM bidding, Greentech Media reports. Southern California Edison received successful bids for roughly 20 MW, Pacific Gas & Electric tapped 17.7 MW, and San Diego Gas & Electric selected almost 3 MW of contracts.

All of the utilities' awards exceeded their required capacity: SCE and PG&E had both been required to contract for at least 10 MW of capacity, while SDG&E sought 2 MW.

California has been looking to better incorporate distributed resources, and and the DRAM construct was developed specifically to draw in a diverse set of demand-side resources into wholesale markets. By enhancing the grid's capability to decrease load during peak demand times, the state hopes to avoid building and utilizing natural gas peaker facilities and ease its transition to 50% renewable resources by 2030 mandate.

Homegrown Ohmconnect was the largest winner in the auction. The San Francisco-based company landed contracts for 5.5 MW with SCE in 9 residential and 1 non-residential projects; almost 2 MW in six projects iwth SDG&E; and contracts with PG&E for an undisclosed amount.

Highlighting growing interest in the transportation sector, MotorWerks was tapped to harness more than 1,000 home electric vehicle charing stations. The startup has commitments with SCE of 900 kW, 300 kW with SDG&E and an additional amount with PG&E.

CEO Valery Miftakhov told Greentech it will be “the largest program to date that integrates electric-vehicle charging as a grid resource."