Residents to be rewarded for cutting energy use at peak periods

Pilot will start in second half of 2024 and will involve OOO homes with smart meters

- Shabana Begum

In a first-of-its-kind initiative to get households to help manage the load on the electricity grid, residents in homes equipped with smart meters will be called upon to adjust their electricity usage during peak demand periods.

The initiative, called Residential Demand Response (R-DR), is targeted to start by the second half of 2024 and will tentatively involve about 1,000 households that have smart electricity meters provided by utilities firm SP Group, said the Energy Market Authority (EMA) on Tuesday.

These households will receive alerts from the SP app to temporarily cut down or defer their electricity usage during demand peaks in the power system.

Once alerted, residents can postpone usage of high energy-consuming appliances such as washing machines or dishwashers, or adjust the temperature of their air-conditioner, or turn it off.

Demand peaks in the power system refer to peaks in electricity consumption by consumers, which tend to occur in the hotter months of the year and in the afternoons, when commercial and industrial activities are running at full speed.

For example, there was an 8 per cent increase in peak electricity demand from 7.3 gigawatts (GW) in February 2023 to 7.9GW in May 2023, when it was hotter.