Facilities Enabled for Automated Demand Response to Increase to 170,000 Sites Worldwide by 201June 19, 2012Demand response (DR) is becoming an increasingly important strategy for utilities to make sure that enough electricity is available on the grid to meet demand in order to avoid power outages. A critical development in this strategy is automated demand response (ADR) technology. This technology automates the notification process – from the utility or grid operator notifying DR program participants to reduce or shift their energy usage to actually implementing the predefined adjustments via control systems on their premises. According to a new report from Pike Research, ADR is gaining increasing attention in the market, especially with the use of open standards such as the OpenADR specification. The cleantech market intelligence firm forecasts that nearly 170,000 facilities around the world will be ADR-enabled by 2018, up from approximately 20,000 sites at the end of 2011. Pike Research anticipates that total annual ADR spending will exceed $1.7 billion by 2018, compared to just $294 million in 2011. |