SEAD – Flexibility for Power Systems: How Appliances and Equipment Can Deliver Demand-Response

Event Information

As power systems face the fast-growing demand for electricity, flexibility becomes crucial. Meeting that demand requires investment not only in renewable and decarbonised energy supply and in stronger grids, but also in equipment and systems that enable the demand side to deliver this essential flexibility. Demand response is vital for balancing electricity supply and demand, maintaining grid stability, and ensuring that massive electrification of end-uses keeps pace with supply growth.

The success of demand-response strategies hinges on regulatory frameworks that ensure appliances and equipment can understand and respond to grid signals. This is especially important for consumers, more of whom will benefit directly from better appliances than from other solutions like batteries and distributed solar generation. The policy options that are currently available can help steer the uptake of demand flexibility, but they must be mainstreamed now into broader strategies for investment in electricity networks worldwide.

In this session, SEAD, in partnership with Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), offered a platform for high-level participants to express a common understanding of demand-response, its role in flexibility, and the necessity for reflecting this in power system strategies. Participants explored what appliances and equipment must do to deliver this flexibility and the necessary regulatory frameworks for effective demand-response.

This session was held in person at the Clean Energy Ministerial in Busan, Korea.