OREANDA-NEWS. Toshiba Corporation announced that it will participate in a demonstration experiment in summertime demand response (DR) in the retail electricity market. The experiment is part of the Yokohama Smart City Project (YSCP), an ambitious program to apply and verify a range of smart grid technologies in a modern city.

Designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of DR in cutting peak power demand, the project will cover a building segment of 26 buildings, factories and housing complexes equipped with building energy management systems (BEMS) and a homes segment of approximately 3,500 of the approximately 4,200 household in Yokohama equipped with home energy management systems (HEMS), solar panels and the like.

The buildings segment will experiment with "negawatt" power trading to prove its validity in systematically meeting electricity demand. In negawatt power trading, saved electricity is treated as a commodity that can be traded as kilowatt hours. Consumers offer a price, a tender, for the electricity they target to save to the community energy management system (CEMS) operator that oversees the overall system, as part of the effort to achieve target savings in the demonstration area. The CEMS accepts tenders, starting with the lowest desired unit price. The CEMS also sets a uniform incentive bonus based on the highest desired unit price. The experiment will investigate the level of bonus payment required to achieve a desired level of power saving.

In addition, with the goal of cutting peak power demand, the CEMS will also positively encourage consumers to save electricity. In earlier YSCP experiments to date, participants were notified of possible tight power supply and the triggering of demand response the day before. In this demonstration, they will be notified twice more, an hour before and 15 minutes before power peak periods, in order to see how they respond and try to save electricity.

Approximately 3500 households-the most yet in Japan*1-will participate in the homes segment demonstration. Based on weather forecasts, the power supply-and-demand conditions for the following day will be forecast. If the power supply is expected to be tight, the community energy management system (CEMS) will e-mail participants, requesting them to try to save electricity during peak periods. In response to this request, the participants will adjust the temperature settings of their air conditioners, change the times when they leave home, and so on. The electricity saved will be aggregated by the HEMS units, and incentive bonuses will be paid to participating households according to their energy savings.

The households will be divided into groups according to the equipment used, and by three fee systems. The results from each group will be compared to identify the fee system most effective in motivating energy savings.

The YSCP project was selected by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in April 2010 as a "next-generation energy/social system demonstration area," to serve as a stepping stone toward the construction and overseas expansion of Japanese technologies and systems for smart communities. In Yokohama, a city with a population of 3.7 million, the local government and 35 companies are conducting various energy management experiments using HEMS, involving approximately 4200 households equipped with a HEMS, and a total of 29 buildings, condominiums and factories*2. Toshiba is coordinating the overall YSCP project and also acts as an organizer or core member of the CEMS, BEMS, HEMS and other working groups.

The insights and expertise acquired through this project will be applied to the development of regional solutions in cooperation with municipal governments.