The California Energy Commission takes an important step toward increasing efficiency and supporting decarbonization efforts.
The California Energy Commission (CEC) has taken a key first step toward a customer-led power sector. In late 2021, the CEC released its new Market Informed Demand Automation Server (MIDAS) database. The MIDAS database provides access to utilities’ time-varying rates, greenhouse gas emission signals, and California Independent System Operator (California ISO) FlexAlerts. When connected to flexible loads (appliances or programs), it can increase efficiency and support decarbonization efforts. This is a huge step toward promoting energy democracy throughout California.
An article in California Current quotes the joint comments that Community Energy Labs, Dynamic Grid, Extensible Energy, and Packetized Energy submitted to the CEC Load Management Rulemaking docket:
The shortcomings of current state-of-the-art demand response and time-of-use pricing approaches were made clear by recent outages in California and Texas.
- Joint comments by CEL and collaborators
CEL has been a registered MIDAS database user since its limited release in 2021. We are actively developing implementations that use the dynamic rates for automated building energy control. This has the potential to save on cost, carbon, energy, and peak demand for commercial customers and the grid.
