Ontario Demand Response
Ontario businesses reduce energy spend and earn money with Enel North America
Enel helps hundreds of organizations across Ontario earn money, save on energy costs, and mitigate carbon emissions with demand response. As a valued partner of the Independent Electric System Operator (IESO), our deep well of market expertise provides the tools and guidance organizations need to maximize their demand response earning potential.
Ontario demand response program overview
Program period |
Year-round, weekdays |
Event duration |
4 hours |
Program hours |
|
Advanced notification |
A stand-by warning is provided day-ahead or day-of (by 8 AM ET). A dispatch notice is provided approximately 2 hours prior to the event start time. |
Ontario demand response program FAQs
Demand response provides a no-risk, no-cost opportunity for commercial, institutional, and industrial organizations in Ontario to earn money and drive energy savings through the IESO’s DR program. Your participation helps maintain reliable electricity across Ontario. Program participants receive recurring payments in return for agreeing to curtail electricity consumption in response to abnormally high electricity demand or grid imbalances. Enel manages your participation from start to finish helping ensure that you receive the highest possible financial rewards.
- Maximize payments to your bottom line: Enel manages your participation from start to finish, ensuring you earn the highest possible financial reward. Since 2015, our customers have earned more than $1.325 billion in payments.
- Improve your facilities’ resilience: In addition to the payments, participants receive advanced notification of grid stability issues, enabling them to proactively protect their facilities from potential power outages.
- Support your community: Your participation helps maintain reliable electricity in your community.
Enel makes participation easy. We take care of the complex details so you can stay focused on running your business.
- Our expert team will work with you to identify your energy reduction potential and create a strategy that delivers maximum value with minimum impact on your operations. We outline these measures in a detailed Energy Reduction Plan.
- In some cases, we install necessary metering devices at your facility to establish communication with our Network Operations Center (NOC), so we can monitor your energy consumption levels in real time.
- Your site is then enrolled and ready to respond when a dispatch begins. Provided your site has Enel metering, log into our app at any time during a dispatch to view your real-time performance.
- Throughout the process, we fully manage enrollment, measurement, verification and payments on your behalf.
- Notification: When the IESO anticipates high demand on the grid, they dispatch the Enel network into action. Enel will notify you via email, phone or SMS, depending on your preferences, to inform you when the dispatch will begin.
- Response: At the start of the dispatch, your facility will reduce its electricity usage according to your predetermined Energy Reduction Plan—either manually or, if requested, automatically through the NOC.
- Support: Before, during, and after a dispatch, our NOC remains in communication with your facility. Our staff is available 24x7x365, supporting you to ensure that you achieve the highest possible levels of performance and payments.
Enel has extensive experience creating energy reduction strategies that work within the operational limitations of a wide variety of facilities, including cold storage, manufacturing, food processing, universities, malls, office buildings and more. We can also help to implement full control systems that allow your electric load to be toggled remotely.
Common reduction examples include:
- Modify manufacturing processes
- Adjust HVAC equipment
- Dial back pumps
- Change settings in industrial freezers
- Reduce non-essential lighting
Customers often facilitate dispatch participation by simply shifting many of their energy-intensive processes by a few hours. Ask us about our experience working with customers like you.
Our experts are standing by to speak with you about your organization’s demand response opportunity. Submit your information here to get a conversation started with our team.