Demand response and load shifting for commercial sites

The automated reduction or shifting of electricity load during high-cost intervals, pre-cooling a warehouse ahead of a peak window, pausing non-critical refrigeration cycles for ten minutes during a price spike, or curtailing EV charging during a grid stress event in exchange for compensation.

No. Well-designed systems work inside operational boundaries the site defines and never compromise critical functions. Flexible load is selected precisely because it can move without affecting production.

Through wholesale demand response mechanisms and aggregator arrangements, sites are compensated for reducing load during high-price events, alongside state schemes such as the NSW Peak Demand Reduction Scheme. Scheme parameters change, so any business case should be modelled against current rules.

Load shifting means moving electricity consumption out of expensive intervals and into cheaper ones, without reducing the total energy used. Cooling, refrigeration, pumping, process heat and water heating can usually run earlier or later without any effect on output. The work is in knowing which intervals will price highest before they arrive, and in shifting load automatically inside limits the site sets rather than by asking someone to remember.

Peak shaving means holding grid draw below a threshold in the specific interval that would otherwise set the monthly demand charge. Load shifting is about the energy price across the day; peak shaving is about a single interval that sets a charge billed for the whole month. A site can shift load all day and still miss the interval that mattered, which is why the two are dispatched differently.

A demand charge bills you for the highest rate of electricity draw recorded in a period, not for total consumption. On Energex and Ergon network tariffs it is typically set by the single worst interval in the month and then charged across every day of that month. It is why a site can cut consumption noticeably and see little change in the bill: the peak that sets the charge never moved.

Energy arbitrage means buying or storing energy when it is cheap and using or selling it when it is expensive. For a commercial site with storage that usually means charging from surplus solar or from low overnight prices, then discharging into the evening peak. It is one of the five value streams a battery can earn from, and it is the one most sensitive to how accurately prices are forecast.