Overall Rating Silver - expired
Overall Score 58.49
Liaison Richard Johnson
Submission Date Nov. 11, 2014
Executive Letter Download

STARS v2.0

Rice University
IN-3: Innovation 3

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 1.00 / 1.00 Richard Johnson
Director of Sustainability
Facilities Engineering and Planning
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Title or keywords related to the innovative policy, practice, program, or outcome:
Demand Response Programs Participation

A brief description of the innovative policy, practice, program, or outcome:

The Environmental Defense Fund defines demand response as “end-use customers reducing their use of electricity in response to power grid needs or economic signals from a competitive wholesale market.” Rice University participates in several demand response programs that are available to customers in the deregulated ERCOT (Electricity Reliability Council of Texas) electricity market. These programs include the ERCOT 30-minute Emergency Response Service (ERS-30) and the CenterPoint Energy Load Management Program. In addition, Rice engages in 4CP management, which refers to the management of electrical usage on the coincident peak usage day for each of the four summer months (June, July, August, and September).

The Environmental Defense Fund promotes demand response in saying that it “diverts money that would generally go to a fossil fuel power plant to homeowners and businesses instead. In this scenario, a utility or demand response provider sends a message for participants to reduce electricity use at key times in exchange for a credit or rebate on their utility bill, in addition to the cost savings they will earn through conservation.” Additional benefits identified by EDF include “enhanced reliability on the power grid, as well as curbing energy use during the hottest and coldest months, offsetting the need for expensive, inefficient, and dirty ‘peaker’ plants generally only used to generate power several dozen hours per year during these periods of extreme weather.” See http://blogs.edf.org/californiadream/2014/04/21/demand-response-people-not-new-power-plants-are-driving-the-clean-energy-future/


A brief description of any positive measurable outcomes associated with the innovation (if not reported above):

Beginning in calendar year 2013, Rice continually contracts 3 megawatts of electricity capacity at minimum into demand response programs 24/7 across the entire calendar year. This means that in a moment of distress on the electrical grid, Rice has pledged to shed 3 megawatts from its electrical import, thus helping to prevent rolling brown-outs in the community while also helping to keep the dirty peaker plants offline (or from even being built). Rice employs a variety of strategies on campus in order to achieve this, including calls to conservation sent out via email to the entire campus community, changing building air conditioning schedules and temperature set-points, and fuel-switching to natural gas-fired cogeneration, which is considerably cleaner than coal-fired power plants.


A letter of affirmation from an individual with relevant expertise:
Which of the following STARS subcategories does the innovation most closely relate to? (Select all that apply up to a maximum of five):
Yes or No
Curriculum No
Research No
Campus Engagement Yes
Public Engagement Yes
Air & Climate Yes
Buildings No
Dining Services No
Energy Yes
Grounds No
Purchasing No
Transportation No
Waste No
Water No
Coordination, Planning & Governance No
Diversity & Affordability No
Health, Wellbeing & Work No
Investment No

Other topic(s) that the innovation relates to that are not listed above:
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The website URL where information about the innovation is available:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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