Jon Wellinghoff, Commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, will cross the Potomac and join other regulators to offer recommendations and address the role of residential customers in demand response.

Gary Swofford, Retired COO of Puget Sound Energy, will talk on how to remove key barriers to demand response. PSE had an oft-cited encounter with demand side management. Swofford has been praised and vilified for the controversial pilot that brought AMI to PSE's territory and almost moved Seattle to a time-of-use tariff.

Richard E. Morgan, D.C. Public Service Commissioner, and Robert Lieberman, Illinois Commerce Commissioner, will speak from a regulatory perspective about demand response.

Lieberman has been a leading voice in demand response programs recently and is chairing the Midwest Demand Resources Initiative. His session is titled "The Dilemma: The 'Anti-Entrepreneurs' are in Charge of Approving Investment in New Information Technology Infrastructure." Sounds contentious.

The conference will conclude with a session on technologies for automating demand response and getting more cost-effective load reductions from utility customers.

The conference is December 3 and 4, 2007. See the box for details.

Demand response from the C&I perspective

Automated demand response and other technology issues were the topic of the "DR-Expo 2007" launched in Chicago last week.

The intense spotlight on curtailing peak load provides an opportunity for building owners to take advantage of lucrative incentives offered by utilities. DR-Expo was the first event totally focused on how building automation systems can facilitate the implementation of demand response.

Friends attending have told me that Andrew Winston, co-author of Green to Gold, gave an excellent presentation. He talked about the overall environmental issues, from ice caps to cars, and shared some useful resources. His talk was apparently very compelling, I regret missing it. When I find out more about that conference, I'll post it in the blog.