At Copper, we unlock better data from electric, gas, and water meters, and use that to help utilities better engage with their customers in a variety of different ways. One particular area of growing focus is natural gas load flexibility, and we recently wrote a forward-looking paper in collaboration with Robbie Johnson, a lead analyst at E Source (a trusted research, advisory, and consulting group that works with utilities across North America) to explore different approaches. That paper was recently published in the proceedings of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings, and we’ve shared some highlights below.
Gas utilities in a time of change
Natural gas utilities are experiencing a variety of emerging challenges, including changing customer trends, new policies that constrain system capacity or limit new infrastructure investments, growing gas demand, and increasingly severe winter storms. On top of all that, gas rates across the country are increasing due largely to the need for new investments in aging infrastructure, and electrification policies could end up pushing gas rates even higher as system costs are spread over fewer customers.
So-called “non-pipeline alternatives” (NPAs), including load flexibility and demand management strategies, offer potential for utilities to help ensure everyone’s needs can reliably be met—even under extreme weather conditions—and support an evolving distribution system during the ongoing energy transition. However, unlike the electric grid, where periods of peak demand that might be addressed through load flexibility strategies often last for just a few hours, peak demand on the gas system can last for much longer, so there’s risk in simply copying electric load management strategies over to gas utilities.
Defining the goals of gas load flexibility
Broadly speaking, NPAs focused on load flexibility and gas demand response (DR) strategies can be particularly helpful for utilities that are facing either distribution or supply constraints. Distribution constraints represent situations like a severe winter storm where there’s plenty of gas supply, but it can be difficult to get that gas to end-use customers at the rate needed. In these situations, reducing the rate of demand during peak periods can help ensure that the gas system is able to meet customer needs despite system limitations without losing pressure or risking outages. Supply constraints occur when there are limitations on the total amount of available gas in the utilities’ reserve storage systems. In these cases, longer DR events that essentially comprise multi-day conservation efforts have potential to help make existing supplies go further while still meeting essential customer needs.
By helping to alleviate supply and distribution challenges, gas load flexibility—and the data that enables it—can help utilities meet a diverse array of goals, from reliability and resiliency to decarbonization planning, affordability, customer equity, and integrated gas/electric system planning.
Residential measures are limited
On the residential side, the U.S. Energy Information Administration suggests that most gas consumption is due to space and water heating. As a result, the most promising load management strategies are likely to be those that can affect these end uses through either automated, control-based measures or behavioral program approaches.
To date, there have been relatively few residential gas DR pilots and programs (particularly in comparison with electric DR offerings), and many of the pilots completed have centered on smart thermostats using approaches similar to those employed by electric utilities. However, while some smart thermostat programs have seen promising results over shorter durations of a few hours (similar to electric DR events), these initiatives face potential challenges when implemented over extended time frames at scale due to preheat/snapback losses, reduction of customer amenity, and potential equity issues given the reliance on in-home equipment supported with robust Wi-Fi networks. Water heater programs also offer some potential for gas load flexibility, but are less well-studied and face additional hurdles with equipment installation and program engagement. Finally, behavioral programs have been relatively little-studied to date, but may offer significant potential by directly engaging customers over different timescales in a scalable and equitable manner, particularly if supported by timely performance-based incentives and established social norming techniques. To learn more about how Copper worked with National Grid on a behavioral DR pilot during an extreme winter bomb cyclone event, see our case study.
How utilities should move forward
As part of an emerging portfolio of NPAs, load flexibility offers myriad potential benefits for gas utilities in key areas such as reliability, decarbonization, affordability, and integrated planning and energy management. To make the most of it, however, gas utilities should be careful not to simply copy strategies from electric utilities, and in many cases they need access to better (more frequent and granular) data—including the kind that Copper’s solutions can uniquely unlock from existing drive-by and smart meters—to evaluate load impacts, improve customer engagement, and create meaningful performance-based incentives.
Since there have been relatively few pilots and programs conducted to date, there’s a clear need for more research into gas-focused approaches to demand management with specific utility needs in mind, along with the impacts of different approaches to incentives and customer engagement. Behavioral programs in particular warrant renewed focus on the gas side since they offer potential to directly engage customers over longer timescales in a scalable and equitable manner.
Ultimately, as gas utilities race towards an uncertain future that promises significant change on multiple fronts, new NPAs and load flexibility strategies represent a critical and exciting opportunity to help manage the system and continue to meet customer needs. Copper is proud to help lead the way by partnering with innovative utilities across the country and exploring a variety of cutting-edge new strategies to help manage the grids of the future.
For more information, check out the full paper here: Towards a More Flexible Gas Future: Emerging Approaches to Residential Gas Load Management.