Household conservation efforts save Portland grid during July heat wave

This article was published by The Energy Mix on July 24, 2024.

By Gaye Taylor

Small energy conservation efforts on the part of Portland General Electric customers added up to big power savings during Oregon’s first heatwave of the summer.

Small, immediate actions like avoiding running large appliances during the evening and reducing air conditioning temperatures, plus longer-term actions like energy-saving upgrades, played a significant role in reducing strain on Portland’s grid as temperatures soared into the low 30s Celsius, well above the expected range for the Pacific northwest city.

“Coupled with PGE’s ongoing system upgrades and preparedness efforts, customers’ collective energy conservation actions supported reliable power delivery and grid stability during a time of extremely high power demand,” the utility said in a release.

Customer actions reduced electricity demand during peak hours by nearly 109 megawatts on Monday, July 8, and by 100 MW on Tuesday. Such demand reduction released enough electricity to “power over 90,000 homes for a four-hour period,” writes PGE. Those numbers represented a considerable uptick from last summer’s metric of 18,500 homes effectively powered by customers enrolled in PGE’s energy-shifting programs.

For the second time in as many years, PGE moved in July to activate its entire suite of energy-shifting programs. It first took that step in August, 2023.

At present, more than 200,000 PGE customers (21 per cent of the total) participate in one or more of the utility’s energy-shifting programs. The utility is clearly hoping for more.

“As the Pacific Northwest continues to see record-breaking summer and winter weather, customers can enrol in energy shifting programs like Peak Time Rebates, Smart Thermostat, Time of Day and EV Smart Charging, all of which enable PGE to safely reduce power use on the system during peak demand,” the release notes.

PGE is clearly looking to where the puck is heading, writes Power Grid International, noting the release last year of its “first-ever Clean Energy Plan, in addition to its Integrated Resource Plan, which called for an onslaught of community-based renewable energy resources.”

PGE has also partnered with Rhode Island-based AI firm Utilidata to pilot “a new smart grid chip, powered by artificial intelligence, alongside electricity meters that integrate distributed energy resources to provide real-time visibility at the grid edge.”