The Government of the Russian Federation has extended the pilot project launched by the Ministry of Energy on the operation of electricity demand management aggregators
The Russian government has published a Resolution extending until December 31, 2021, the pilot project on the operation of electricity demand management aggregators, as well as increasing the maximum volume of such services provided under the "pilot".
Demand management aggregators are specialized companies or organizations that allow any electricity consumers to earn money by managing their consumption levels. Aggregators bring together consumer groups and manage their aggregate electricity demand. By reducing the consumption of their groups at certain hours (known a day in advance), aggregators and consumers receive payments from the energy market for this. A positive effect for the power system from the aggregators is to reduce the load during the hours when it is highest and consumption is at its maximum peaks.
During the pilot project (started on June 1, 2019), 70 companies took part in it, representing more than 300 control objects. Each of which, in turn, consists of power receivers of one or several consumers. For 1.5 years, the capacity of resources for managing the demand of retail consumers has grown from 50 MW to 600 MW, and the number of regions where the project is present has exceeded 50. This fact has led to the formation of competitive prices for aggregator services at a level significantly lower than the established regulatory limit values. The cumulative effect from the implementation of the pilot project due to a decrease in the cost of electricity in the wholesale market for consumers for the period from June 1, 2019 to July 1, 2020 amounted to more than 80 million rubles.
Based on the results of the analysis of the aggregators' work carried out by the Ministry of Energy of Russia and the application of the mechanism for managing the demand for electricity in the retail markets in 2019-2020, the pilot project was recognized as successful, and its extension was expedient.
The extension of the pilot project, as well as an increase in its scale, will allow not only to maintain the existing growth dynamics of the market for demand management services in retail markets and indicators of its efficiency, but also to work out and improve the criteria for triggering the mechanism for reducing consumption to prepare a target model, which is planned to be launched from January 1, 2022.