Demand-side response is a requisite of net zero, shifting energy in times of peak demand to support the electricity grid. National Grid ESO’s Demand Flexibility Service (DFS) has illustrated the potential of demand-side response as last winter’s DFS events shifted over 3.3GWh of electricity.
The willingness of energy customers to alter their energy usage patterns according to grid strain can be seen in the 1.4 million households and businesses which signed up for the second DFS, which went live on 30 October and had its first test event last week (16 November).
A new partnership between Samsung and Chameleon Technology’s consumer brand, ivie, aims to make Demand Response even easier for the domestic consumer by automatically flexing and saving their energy usage.
The company’s ‘Flex and Save’ scheme, is returning for a second DFS, but is now also supporting Samsung SmartThings new Demand Response service for its first run this winter.
The SmartThings Demand Response service allows consumers using Samsung SmartThings appliances, as well as ivie’s energy saving app, to both automatically switch appliances off and lower their energy usage during a DFS event.
This function means that consumers can lower appliance energy usage even when they are not at home.
Current± sat down with Mike Pyke, COO of Chameleon Technology to learn more about the ‘set and forget’ function and what the future of demand-side response looks like.
Can you explain how the SmartThings Demand Response services operates?
One of the lifestyle services within Samsung’s Internet of Things (IoT) platform, SmartThings, is SmartThings energy, which brings together all of the appropriate compatible appliances in your home. We’ve been partners with SmartThings energy since 2019, providing ‘whole home energy’ data – either via a DCC feed [‘once a day’ data where the consumer doesn’t need any other hardware other than a smart meter] or using our ivie Bud which allows the data stream to effectively upgrade to ‘near real-time.’ This means that the ivie/SmartThings DFS service doesn’t require the consumer to have any ivie hardware to enable it – it’s a completely free service to any consumer with a smart meter.
A lot of the data we provide is semi-automated, it’s giving consumers information for them to act on, but the ‘set and forget’ function effectively introduces a demand response capability built within the SmartThings energy platform. This means that consumers can enlist their compatible devices in a ‘set and forget’ type of capability to demand response.
Typically what this does is it allows the technology to turn off lights or turn unwanted plugs during a DFS event, it can also turn down a thermostat or reduce the power going to your heating. There is also an additional function, called AI Energy mode which takes this a step further by enabling a low power setting mode for Samsung compatible devices.
The best example would be a fridge freezer; if a flex event is live and a customer has AI Energy mode turned on, it will stop the fridge freezer’s compressors from kicking in during that period, as long as it’s safe to do so and ensuring the food within remains safe. What makes this exciting is that these are not things that a consumer would normally be able to set themselves. Another example is turning your TV to low power mode for an hour; this is not an easy menu option and it’s not something people do.
So the AI Energy mode really enables you to optimise the power savings of these devices without having to physically do anything yourself during the event. You don’t even have to be at home. It’s non-intrusive power saving.
How can this function help increase behind-the-meter participation in flexibility services?
Once a SmartThings user register’s with the ivie’s ‘Flex and Save’ capability – which is our National Grid ESO-approved DFS solution – ivie will send a trigger command to SmartThings on behalf of users who have opted into the scheme when a demand response event is active and the ‘opted-in’ assets in the house will automatically start to power down.
What makes this function significant is the automatic element, allowing consumers to turn appliances off and on, as well as lowing their energy usage, all without needing to be present. For me, that is the really exciting bit and I’m really looking forward to seeing the impact that this AI Energy mode will have by making changes that consumers otherwise cannot or wouldn’t make; it goes beyond the human interaction capability of typical consumers in their own home.
There are also additional advantages to last year’s flexibility events such as not needing to enrol for every DFS event, which means that households on ivie’s ‘Flex and Save’ scheme can take steps to temporarily lower their ‘always on’ energy background load during every DFS events by opting in once.
What customer reviews have been obtained during trials of the service?
Although the ‘Flex and Save’ has not been launched yet in the UK (this will happen before the first DFS event) it has been successfully launched in both the US and Korea and the feedback there is very positive. The reports we’ve had are that it’s increasing people’s ability to flex, simply by adding automatic flexibility options on top of manual options.
As an operator of the DFS system for National Grid ESO, we track consumers’ baseline usage before and during DFS events which is how we award points to participants. This data will also be used to compare the metadata of enrolled AI Energy consumers versus standard ‘Flex and Save’ consumers and it will be very interesting to see how that compares overall.
What’s the next step for/potential of behind-the-meter flexibility?
I think we will see similar automatic demand response services – including lowering energy usage – from other manufacturers. By next winter, we could see other major white goods manufacturers building in this ‘power-down’ flexibility – which is largely unintrusive to the user – into their core products as well.
