A clearinghouse that brings third parties and the 2,000+ electric utilities together to create a national market for Demand Response (DR) is needed, according to Roy Perry of Alarm.com.  Perry, formerly of Cable Labs, has been a thought-leader in looking at how to achieve energy efficiency goals in cost-effective ways (see this interview from the 2011 Parks Associates’ Smart Energy Summit).

In this video interview, he calls for standard Application Programming Interfaces that allow third-parties to act on real-time data from utilities.  For instance, the utility would signal peak demand and the third-parties would act upon this information by controlling their customers’ thermostats in such a way to reduce peak demand without impacting consumer comfort.  This would already be significant, as Alarm.com, which is one of many supplier, already has 100k+ thermostats under its control.

He points out that with a simple API definition of grid status and a simple way to measure meters, a market could be created in a few months.  The clearinghouse would serve as an exchange of data, as well as a clearinghouse for money.  He suggests that, in exchange for the benefit of shedding load from the third-party Demand Response systems, money could flow from the utilities to the consumer; giving the consumer an incentive to adopt products that will help utilities and third-parties better control peak-demand.

[ViodiTV coverage of the Smart Energy Summit 2012 brought to you by Parks Associates.  Music to the above video provided by the People Power Band.]