Demand Response
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
Did you know that when the grid is stressed, farmers can get paid to power down? Through demand response programs, agriculture, especially irrigation, offers valuable flexibility. CEO, Tyler Nuss, says that at Polaris Energy Services, they are helping growers optimize their energy use through these incentive programs.
Nuss… “Utilities have to figure out ways to manage blackouts, right? So, demand response is a tried and true mechanism by which utilities will incentivize customers that use a lot of energy to shed their load during demand response events. So these programs exist in a ton of different markets, a ton of different industries, but agriculture is a really big one, specifically around pumping load. Pumping load is a great energy asset from a flexibility perspective because it's the pumps either on or off. And so it's actually a very good resource for utilities to have this grid reliability. So what Polaris does is we help growers do that, and so we help growers enroll in these programs. We manage the whole process to them and we enable it through our own hardware by automating pumps, but also work with third-party partners, automation partners, so that customers can participate in these programs and earn revenue by participating.”
Nuss says Polaris handles enrollment and automation to help growers get returns.
