In the height of summer 2005-06 a journalist at The Age, Rod Myer, wrote this article “Power to cut out the middleman” to highlight a different approach a number of large industrial energy users were adopting to lower their average cost of energy consumed, whilst at the same time providing a valuable service to the market in helping to mitigate peak demand.
The article begins:
“SEVERAL Australian businesses are choosing to manage their exposure to the national electricity market directly rather than contract with retailers. And many who choose to go down this path are providing much needed backup for the power system by turning their plant off when power prices spike.”
Given that our company has been active in facilitating Demand Response for a number of years, it made sense that our comment was sought about this emerging opportunity for energy users.
The author notes our CEO, Paul McArdle, as commenting that:
“… companies using Global Roam software had added about 200 megawatts of demand-side response to the market by cutting use at certain trigger power prices.”