Energy Solutions
Metropolitan Energy provides demand response products and services to commercial buildings in major metropolitan areas. These products and services allow commercial buildings to reduce their energy expense and exposure by participating as demand resources—effectively as virtual generating facilities.
Metropolitan Energy is distinguished by:
- Commercial office building and focus
- Low cost demand response products and services
Commercial Buildings
On hot summer days, when the demand for electricity is spiking, commercial buildings can account for more than one-third of electrical loads. To participate as demand resources, commercial buildings require information and demand response products from a reliable service provider. But for many buildings, their usage data is tied up with antiquated metering and non-real-time analysis tools. Such information continues to be vastly underutilized; such data woefully ineffective for anything beyond the most rudimentary forms of demand response and industry benchmarking tools.
Traditional demand response programs treat consumers as emergency resources of a last resort. Commercial buildings are not necessarily well-suited for such programs as buildings cannot be dispatched or shut-down for long periods of time during normal operating hours.
However, advanced building automation systems in commercial buildings can provide an excellent resource for more sophisticated demand response programs. With rising and volatile energy prices, newly transparent electric markets and renewed interest in green solutions, commercial buildings remain an untapped demand resource, particularly with their almost unlimited start/stop flexibility.
Low Cost Demand Response Products and Services
The first step for customers to operate as demand resources is to have access to their own electric usage information and market pricing. Metropolitan Energy combines market prices and customer usage information, allowing customers to analyze their usage patterns within a market-pricing context and to participate as demand resources in wholesale energy markets.
MetLinkDR also serves as the framework for other, more sophisticated demand response products. The low cost nature of MetLinkDR allows Metropolitan Energy to offer some of the most advanced commercial building demand response products at the lowest prices.
Coincident with the implementation of smart grid activities, the marginal cost of acquiring information is declining. To realize the potential of smart grid technologies, energy users require unfettered real-time access to information in a manner that meets—and exceeds—market requirements and incorporates supply and demand.
Metropolitan Energy serves as a framework for sophisticated demand response products, offering some of the most innovative and advanced solutions to commercial buildings in the market.
To participate as demand resources in electricity markets, commercial buildings require information and reliable demand response products.