Australia’s corporate and industrial energy users, such as manufacturers and retailers, now have the ability to remotely and instantly manage electricity consumption during demand peaks, thanks to an Australian-first deal between ERM Power Limited and EnerNOC.

The agreement will see ERM Power’s sales business, which trades as ERM Business Energy, become the first Australian retailer to offer EnerNOC’s cloud-based services to customers, giving large organisations new flexibility to participate in potentially lucrative “demand response” activities.

Demand response involves users voluntarily switching off or turning down equipment during power peaks and receiving incentive payments or bill rebates in return.

For a large power user which is equipped to respond quickly during these events, savings can amount to tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

ERM Power chief executive electricity sales Mitch Anderson says the new technology allowed customers to specify demand response parameters and be switched off remotely when their parameters met the market’s need.

“Customers can nominate, for example, that power to a particular piece of machinery can be shut off between 12.30pm to 2pm, but at no other times,” he says.

“Using EnerNOC’s technology, our traders can monitor the market, monitor the curtailable load available to us in real-time, and use our customers’ pre-approval to switch off automatically when prices spike.”

One of the first Australian businesses to benefit from the new system is shopping centre owner Westfield.

Westfield general manager facilities & sustainability Sue O’Malley says when wholesale electricity prices spiked, Westfield would reduce electricity consumption at a number of its shopping centres where this would not impact tenants or customers.

“At certain times our shopping centres have some capacity to reduce electricity consumption for very short periods without negatively impacting the environment for our tenants or customers – for example, by taking advantage of chilled water storage in air-conditioning
systems.”

“This capacity means that we are able to access the financial benefits of participating in electricity demand response at certain times.

“When ERM sees that there is value in load curtailment, we receive an automated phone message telling us the proposed time, and we can accept or decline the opportunity.

“We also receive real-time electricity data via a web portal to help us optimise our demand response and analyse our energy consumption and efficiency,” she says.

Mitch says participation in the ERM Power-EnerNOC program also gave customers the option of accessing EnerNOC’s EfficiencySMART tools, which include customisable dashboards, reports and alerts that help customers to use energy more efficiently and reduce expenditure.

“EfficiencySMART’s alerting features will help ERM Power customers reduce their exposure to network charges, which typically make up about half of end-users’ electricity bills.

“ERM Power has been ranked the number one electricity retailer in Australia for customer service to business for the past two years, and our goal is to retain that market-leading position by providing quality services to our customers, like EnerNOC’s state-of-the-art energy management tools,” he says.