How to enable consumers to be responsive to electricity prices 1

I had an interview so I missed most of "The Emerging Models for Demand-Response Technology." I walked in about halfway through.

• Reliant Energy, Mark Jacobs, CEO
• EnerNOC, Scott McGaraghan, Director of Business Development--West Coast
• IBM, Ron Ambrosio, Global Research Leader--Energy & Utilities 
• PG&E, Janice Berman, Senior Director of Customer Generation and Emerging Technologies

Tons of interesting stuff being said, but I'm too late to helpfully summarize. Suffice to say, lots of people are out there working on ways to get information into consumers' hands, enabling them to modify their energy use based on price and environmental signals. There are nifty technologies aplenty -- most of the barriers, as usual, are political, regulatory, and psychological.

Jacobs makes the very good point that it's difficult for these things to take off -- we've been talking about them for 30 years -- as long as utilities make their money by adding capacity and providing more juice. He says that model must change for demand response to go to the next level. That's why he chose to start a private company.

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