At the “Flex-E—Flexibility in the Power System” conference, hosted by the Forum for Energy, RAP’s Edith Bayer highlighted the important role that the Polish consumer can play in supporting the evolution of the power system in Poland. She emphasized the value of demand response in strengthening the elasticity and reliability of the Polish power system, at the lowest overall cost to the consumer.

“There are many ways to engage consumers to shift their energy use in time or to conserve energy,” said Bayer. “The key is to unlock the market for demand response by opening up markets and aligning regulatory incentives.”

RAP, together with the Forum for Energy, published an analysis (in Polish) exploring Poland’s experience with demand response, identifying its potential, and recommending ways to stimulate greater deployment.

“Poland has the potential to develop at least 1200 MW of demand response. That’s the equivalent of one large power plant, or enough to meet at least five percent of peak demand,” explains the study’s co-author, Dr. Jan Rączka. “The expansion of demand response reserves by the transmission system operator is a step in the right direction, but more needs to be done to activate the full potential.”

RAP recommends several steps to realize the potential of demand response in Poland:

• Strengthen the role of demand response in the transmission system operator’s reserves by lowering the 10 MW threshold for participation and encouraging aggregators to participate.
• Enable demand response aggregators to play an active role in the balancing market.
• Introduce regulatory incentives and remove barriers to investment by transmission and distribution system operators in demand response as a resource to reinforce power networks.
• Introduce dynamic tariffs that align customer incentives with power system needs.

A recording of the conference and the presentations are available on the Forum for Energy website.