Thoughts From Day 2

So, I've had two days of work, and it's gone well so far. I'm fighting some sniffles I think I got from my dad last weekend, but it's not too bad. Otherwise, Boston's been good to me so far.

As promised, here's what EnerNOC does, in three short, exciting paragraphs:

Let's say the power company for a given region has 20 power plants. 10 of those will be on at all times, providing the baseline energy that area will use for most of the year. The other 10 are backup, or "peak" plants. During the summer when it's really hot out and everyone turns on their air conditioners, all of a sudden we need more power. That's when these peak plants turn on. But these peak plants are less efficient, and the power companies lose money turning these things on, plus they're bad for the environment.

EnerNOC comes along and says, "okay, it costs you $1m to turn on peak plant #3, and it provides you with an additional SUPPLY of 50 megawatts (mW) of power. What if you could pay EnerNOC just $500,000, and we reduce DEMAND for electricity by 50mW?" To the power company, they're the same thing, but EnerNOC does it cheaper. The power companies win because they don't have to build new peak power plants, and they can fire up existing ones less often. They also reduce their impact on the environment.

So how does EnerNOC actually reduce demand? Well, they spend that $500,000 we just talked about. They take a cut (to pay their employees, including scruffy interns like myself) and use the rest to pay big stores, office buildings, factories, etc. to reduce their burden on the power grid. The specifics depend on the location: an office building might turn off every other lighting fixture and lower the setting on their heating or cooling unit. A supermarket might switch to backup generators. The demand response solution is different for each place of business. Then, when EnerNOC sends out the call that a demand response event will be happening, the company is all set to go. The customer flips a switch, they reduce their power usage for the duration, then turn it back on at the end of the event. The customer saves money on their energy bill, and in addition to that, gets a check from EnerNOC for participating.

In summary, an event goes something like this:

1. A power grid operator calls EnerNOC and says "today from 2:00 to 5:00PM, we need you to cut 100mW"
2. EnerNOC contacts all its customers connected to that power company and says "Hey, we're having a curtailment event from 2 to 5."
3. At 2, companies initiate their plans (turning off lights, etc.). Supermarket A might be responsible for 1mW, office building B might do .7mW, factory C might do 4mW. In the end, it all adds up to 100mW.
4. at 2:01, EnerNOC starts making calls to businesses that have not reduced power usage to find out what's going on. These calls continue throughout the event.
   
5. The event ends, and lights go back to normal. The Data Analytics Group compiles all the data and (dur dur dur) analyzes it. They send around a report that says which businesses performed well, which businesses underperformed, if we met our goals or not, etc.
6. We make changes to our procedure and get ready for the next event.
   

Who wins?

• Power companies: They pay EnerNOC less than it would cost them to fire up peak plants, and thus save money
• The "customer" businesses: They're literally getting paid to turn off lights. How awesome is that?
• The environment: Peak plants are bad, keeping them off is good
• Me: I get employed!

So how does Eli fit into all this? That's totally what you were going to ask, right? Well, right now, we're not in the thick of event season, but it's going to start in about a week, and we need to be ready. During an event, if a site isn't turning off its lights like they're supposed to, we need to be able to call them, figure out what the problem is ASAP, and coach them so they can carry out their end of the bargain. My job is to make sure different spreadsheets, software and databases are up-to-date and ready to go before next week so we can waste as little time as possible searching for missing pieces. Events only last a few hours, so everyone needs to be at 100% efficiency. We can sleep later. During an event, it's all about coffee.

Sounds like finals week, right?

Much love to my soon-to-graduate friends at Goucher. I'll miss you all next year; good luck with your summer plans.