The Super Stop & Shop grocery in Long Island City, Queens, is participating in a new system meant to take pressure off the local power grid. In times of peak demand, some of the grocery’s lights, air-conditioning and even refrigeration systems can be temporarily shut down — by a computer in Boston, 200 miles away.
Nationwide, several thousand businesses like Super Stop & Shop, as well as residential customers, are ceding control of their electrical systems during moments of unusually high demand. And they are being paid to do it.
The system, based on a concept called demand response, is one of the latest ways that Internet technology is being applied to improve the management of the nation’s taxed power supplies.
The supporters of demand-response technology say they can save utilities and their customers tens of millions of dollars by selectively curbing demand when the grid is at capacity.
Once the system is in place, the utility’s role is limited to notifying the operators of demand-response systems that it is time to start shutting down the lights remotely.
“We tie in to their electrical panel, toggle the relay and curtail 40 percent of their lighting,” said David Brewster, the president of Enernoc, one of several publicly traded companies in the demand-response business.
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