As part of the expansion of the Peak Saver program, BC Hydro approached Rainforest Automation to help with an Enhanced Engagement trial. The goal of the trial was to drive additional demand reduction during events by providing real-time notifications to select participants.
This Behavioural Demand Response Program resulted in up to 50% reduction in usage.
As part of the expansion of the Peak Saver program, BC Hydro approached Rainforest Automation to help with an Enhanced Engagement trial. The goal of the trial was to drive additional demand reduction during events by providing real-time notifications to select participants. Participants for the trial were recruited from the pool of existing Rainforest Automation EAGLE-200 users. These customers were asked to download the Rainforest EnergyVUE mobile app and to allow in-app notifications to receive alerts about Peak Saver events, in addition to the regular emails sent to all participants.
Rainforest created a new Messaging feature in its cloud Management Portal, which allows the utility Program Manager to create, edit, and schedule alerts to be dispatched to participants. These alerts appear on the user’s phone as a notification at the scheduled time. It is not necessary for the app to be running at the time for the alerts to appear.
The Enhanced Engagement trial was active during the 2018-2019 Winter season. A total of seven Peak Saver events were called in the months of December, January, and February. For each of these events the Enhanced Engagement trial participants were sent alerts at the start time or just prior to the event starting. Some events also had an additional push notification during the event.
The Peak Saver participants’ average energy consumption tracked closely to a random sample of BC Hydro customers who were not participants (the Control group). However, during events, the Peak Saver participants’ consumption dropped sharply for the duration of the event, while the Control group consumption peaked.
The participants in the Enhanced Engagement trial had a higher average energy consumption overall compared to the Control group. This is likely because higher energy consumers are more motivated to purchase energy management systems such as the EAGLE- 200. Likewise, these higher energy consumers have more consumption margin to cut back and stand to earn more financial rewards from the program.
The raw data shows that the EAGLE-200 users had a higher absolute kWh reduction (shown in orange below) during the event – more than 3x the savings compared to the other Peak Saver participants (shown in green).
This can be seen even more dramatically when the curves are normalized. The EAGLE-200 users in the Enhanced Engagement trial showed up to a 50% drop in consumption, compared to the Control group. This was almost double the 27% average reduction by the rest of the Peak Saver participants for the same event.
The EAGLE-200 users who received the real-time alerts sent through the EnergyVUE app not only responded with more savings, but also started earlier than other participants. This behavior was tested during the January 29, 2019 event, when the Program Manager realized after the event started that the alerts had not been scheduled. An alert was quickly sent out one hour into the event. This resulted in a one-hour delay in the large drop in consumption by the Enhanced Engagement trial participants.
This trial demonstrated that alerts delivered in real time directly to users via a phone app can be effective in triggering significant levels of timely participation in Demand Response events. It also shows that existing EAGLE-200 users represent an attractive pool of high-yield potential program participants.