Please mark your calendars for NEM's Winter Executive Committee Meeting to be held on January 28-30, 2013. The meeting will once again be held at SCRA located at 5300 International Blvd, North Charleston, South Carolina. Many thanks to Bill Mahoney and SCRA for graciously hosting us. You may register for the meeting at this hotlink. Accommodations for the meeting have been arranged at the Hilton Garden Inn. Please use this hotlink to make your hotel reservations.

FERC Staff has issued its 2012 Assessment of Demand Response and Advanced Metering. The Report reveals significant growth in advanced metering deployment in the U.S., and projects continued growth in the coming years. There are currently 38 million advanced meters operating in the U.S. (38 million) which translates to twenty percent of total meters installed. The most widely used means of providing consumers with meter data access is via internet.

The Report additionally found that potential peak reduction in the U.S. increased from 2010 to 2012 by more than 10,000 MW, from 53,062 to 66,351 MW in 2012, which is a 25 percent increase in reported potential peak reductions from demand response. Four demand response program types comprise 80 percent of the total reported potential peak reduction in 2012 as follows: load as a capacity resource (29 percent of all reported demand response potential peak reduction); interruptible load (24 percent); direct load control (15 percent); and time-of-use (12 percent).

Interestingly, the Report stated that nearly 2.1 million residential customers are on a time-of-use rate, up from 1.1 million in 2010. The Report also identified barriers to demand response such as: the limited number of retail Customers on time-based rates; measurement and cost-effectiveness of reductions; lack of uniform standards for communicating demand response pricing, signals and usage information; lack of customer engagement; and lack of demand response forecasting and estimation tools.

The full text of the 2012 Assessment of Demand Response and Advanced Metering is available on the NEM Website.