Dynamic demand (electric power)

It is also the name of an independent not-for-profit organization in the UK supported by a charitable grant from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, dedicated to promoting this technology.

Any remaining imbalance would then be due either to inaccuracies in the prediction, or unscheduled changes in supply (such as a power station fault) and/or demand.

A generator in frequency-response mode will, under nominal conditions, run at reduced output in order to maintain a buffer of spare capacity.

Generally blackstarts are made more difficult because of the large number of reactive loads attempting to draw power simultaneously at start up when voltages are low.

In particular it would allow these sources to work in conjunction with virtual power reserves like municipal water towers[8] to provide a reasonably predictable dispatchable capacity.

On 1 March 2011, RLtec launched its Dynamic Demand frequency response service in hot water and HVAC load devices distributed across one of the UK's largest supermarket chains, Sainsbury's.

This megawatt scale virtual power plant service provides commercial frequency regulating response to National Grid in the UK.

For a complete description of this complex system see for example "Emergency Diesel Standby Generator’s Potential Contribution to Dealing With Renewable Energy Sources Intermittency And Variability" - a talk by David Andrews of Wessex Water who works closely with the UK National Grid to provide this service, given at the Open University Seminar "Coping with Variability - Integrating Renewables into the Electricity System" 24 January 2006.

It lists a number of technical and economic barriers to its introduction and recommends these be investigated before the government encourage the use of dynamic demand.

Dynamic demand is one element of a wider government investigation into technologies that can cut greenhouse gas emissions.