Since the company's founding in 2000, Summit Blue has helped utilities and regulatory commissions to develop demand response strategies and programs, create new pricing structures, and evaluate the impacts to both the utilities and their ratepayers. Time-of-use and dynamic pricing provide price signals aimed at achieving peak load reductions that are often part of comprehensive demand response strategy. Now Smart Grid has begun to better enable these initiatives through improved communications between the utility, the customer, and the grid. Smart Grid Summit Blue's Smart Grid consulting area includes strategy development, pilot and program design, technology assessment, vendor selection, and project implementation. The firm leverages its experience in renewables and distributed resource integration as well as extensive industry participation in Smart Grid development efforts. This background and active industry participation allow the practice area staff to provide clients with insight and perspective into how the broader industry and marketplace are developing and ultimately help to ensure successful Smart Grid investments. Demand Response Summit Blue is recognized as a leader in demand response (DR) consulting, having assisted large and small utilities in identifying load curtailment potential, designing DR programs, and assessing the resulting benefits and cost-effectiveness. Summit Blue staff serve on the Board of the Peak Load Management Alliance, as chair of the Demand Response and Pricing Committee of the Association of Energy Services Professionals (AESP), and as conference speakers on the subject of demand response and its role in utility resource planning. Pricing Summit Blue has designed and evaluated time-of-use (TOU) and dynamic rates for multiple clients, including conducting the first impact analysis for a residential day-ahead hourly rate. Based on the success of this rate as demonstrated by the Summit Blue analysis, similar rates have now been adopted by regulated utilities throughout Illinois. The team employs statistical regression techniques to isolate the impact of prices, weather, time of day, and other factors. With Summit Blue's TOU Price Optimization Model, utilities can select the "ideal" set of on- and off-peak prices and periods to achieve specified goals for peak load reductions and customer bill savings. To learn more about Summit Blue's smart grid, demand response, and pricing practice area, please contact practice area lead Stuart Schare at sschare@summitblue.com.
