Messer: Making Demand Response Work for Hard-to-Flex Sites

On paper, cryogenic air separation is close to the hardest case for demand side response. Two electric motors draw almost all the energy at each plant. There is no partial setting and bringing the installation back up takes eight to twelve hours.

Shutting down for a long stretch would be extremely costly. Shutting down for a few hours would be pointless, and switching off just a part of the installation isn’t possible. 

A standard programme structure has no room for a site like this. What made participation possible was the shape of the agreement rather than the shape of the plant. 

Enel X Polska built the conditions around what the sites could actually do — removing exposure to calls that would be too short or too long to serve, and to a volume of calls the plants could not meet. The Messer companies stayed in the programme even after the system operator widened the call windows and lifted the cap on how many calls could be made. All available capacity at both plants is now enrolled, at 20 MW declared reduction.

• Why an all-or-nothing process needs its participation terms negotiated rather than accepted
• How exposure to unservable calls is removed from an agreement
• What changed when the system operator extended call periods and removed the limit on their number
• How two plants with 14 MW and 10 MW connection capacity reach a combined 20 MW declared reduction.