End Use Load Flexibility Project

Northwest utilities are navigating significant challenges to maintain a safe, reliable, and affordable electrical grid amidst evolving demands. Increasing temperature extremes are driving peak demand in both summer and winter, while the electrification of buildings and transportation is boosting load growth. The retirement of emitting resources like coal plants cannot yet be fully offset by intermittent resources such as wind and solar, especially with utility-scale storage still in its early stages. Additionally, hydropower, which supplies about 50% of the region’s energy, is threatened by reduced snowpack and drought conditions. These factors are impacting grid reliability and increasing energy costs for all customers.

The 2021 Northwest Power Plan anticipates up to 3,500 MW of additional coal plant retirements by 2029. To address this, the region is set to add 3,500 MW of renewable resources by 2027. However, renewable resources with variable generation cannot fully replace the firm capacity of retired coal plants on a one-to-one basis. Flexible end-use load resources are essential for integrating renewable energy and filling the expanding capacity gap by meeting system peaks and providing greater load control flexibility.

The key to overcoming these challenges lies in aligning energy demand with availability through load flexibility. Load Flexibility, defined as the ability of electricity customers to adjust their energy usage to match the supply of electricity, is crucial for mitigating the negative impacts on the Northwest’s energy system.

As a Market Transformation organization with a 25-year history of delivering permanent market change, the alliance can play an important role in helping the region accelerate adoption of new end-use technologies that enable more flexible, efficient operation of the electric system and increased integration of renewable energy. By pooling resources and working together as an alliance, the Northwest can:

• Mitigate the cost and risks of individual utility load flexibility efforts.

• Aggregate influence with global market actors and influence the national supply chain.

• Provide economies of scale.

In January 2023, NEEA hosted a regional End-Use Load Flexibility workshop to gauge regional interest in a collaborative end-use load flexibility effort. At that time, several stakeholders expressed interest in NEEA evaluating near-term opportunities that could be initiated beginning in 2024. After further discussions with these stakeholders, NEEA developed and launched the 2024-2025 End-Use Load Flexibility Project to explore Market Transformation opportunities to enhance the region's capacity to manage electric loads.

The project prioritizes opportunities focusing on improving the efficiency, connectivity, and controllability of end-use devices and leveraging NEEA’s existing market relationships and product development expertise, research and analytics capabilities and role as a regional convenor. 

With this project, NEEA seeks to catalyze innovation and Market Transformation towards a more flexible and reliable energy system. The near-term goal is to expedite the integration of features that enable end-use load flexibility and gain insight into related opportunities. Although the initial focus will be on residential end-use technologies, future activities may extend to commercial/ non-residential end-use applications.

Results and learnings from the project are informing development of a longer-term End-Use Load Flexibility Market Transformation Portfolio projected to begin in 2026.