Energy Efficiency Impact on Demand

Recent news on the DOE secretary was about his speech at an energy forum attended by electric power industry stakeholders. The secretary was quoted to point at energy efficiency as a solution to the crisis in energy. He said if people would practice the Energy Efficiency Protocol,  the expected demand reduction will be 20% for residential load and 25% for industrial/commercial demand. If residential load is say 30% of the total grid demand then we can follow a formula like,

            TD_Eff = Res(0.8) + Ind(0.75) = (0.3)TD(0.8) + (0.7)TD(0.75) 

TD is the total demand and TD_Eff is the TD with energy efficiency at the demand side.

The DOE secretary also mentioned the energy savings from using energy efficient devices will solve the power shortage for three to four years. Following the DOE forecast on Visayas and applying the formula above, I wanted to verify the declaration.

Looking at the graph above, the DOE demand forecast is above the dependable generation capacity. When energy efficiency is accounted, the demand goes below the dependable capacity for the upcoming four years.

Does this solve the power shortage? No.

Grid operations require generation reserves to maintain system frequency and prepare for unforeseen grid contingencies. In real time, there are generation or transmission outages due to planned maintenance or forced outages.Visayas grid, as per NGCP website requires about 190MW for its generation reserves at the present time. Apparently, load will catch up with the generation capacity in 2013 based on DOE's projections.

Energy efficiency is good not only for the reduction of grid demand but also it makes the grid environment friendly. It will surely help, but given the situation, it does not solve the power shortage for the coming four years.

PS - At present, the dependable capacity in the Visayas alone is at 1,505 MW while peak demand is at 1,430 MW, with a required reserve margin of 335 MW.