Train As You Fight, Fight As You Train - Demand Response in the September '22 Heat Wave

There is a common edict among militaries to "Train As You fight, Fight As You Train" and it is applicable and useful to any organization or profession that requires top performance in extremely high-stakes and high-stress situations. A sad corollary is that many of the heroic actions that become legendary are the result of operations where something went wrong; when everything goes according to plan, no medals are awarded.

California's response to the heat wave that nearly brought the grid to its breaking point was heroic, but our preparation does not heed this wisdom.

1. We, as an industry and an ecosystem can congratulate ourselves on delivering when it mattered most, stabilizing the grid in the face of unprecedented temperatures with their amplified impacts on energy supply and demand.? Polaris Energy Services did its part with more than 55 MW of participating load.
2. We continue to accept what should be an unacceptable situation in which compensated demand response competes with free demand response, solicited and provided for “God and Country.” The proliferation of back-patting messages from elected officials, regulators and utilities buries the fact that voluntary demand response inhibits the growth and proper valuation of well-functioning markets and technologies. Addiction to the free stuff is debilitating and violates basic fairness. To continue the military analogy, free DR is like a Revolutionary War militia - fine when there is no choice but eventually you have to build a standing army.
3. What works even better, and does not appear clearly in the CAISO charts, is demand flexibility as proposed in the CPUC’s Cal Fuse framework. It is not apparent in the daily charts because it has already been shifted! In Polaris’ pilot with Valley Clean Energy and TeMix, agricultural pumping load already looked like an inverted duck after weeks of responding to more moderate price signals.?This is the equivalent of the battle for which no Purple Hearts are awarded!

4. To get the remainder of potentially flexible load off the grid when needed, emergency DR is useful but we need policies that enable these tools to co-exist in the same shed. The same parties that post frantic tweets asking for every last drop of load reduction when its 117F in September are extremely concerned about the mere possibility of a customer benefitting from ‘dual participation’ when they are sipping hot cocoa in a Zoom meeting on a chilly December day. We need to make the same policy decisions every day that we would make when the purple and green lines are about to cross.