EVALUATING DSM - CAN AN ENGINEER COUNT ON IT - A SHORT NOTE PAPER SUMMARIZING A PANEL SESSION AT THE JULY 1992 SUMMER POWER MEETING

There is an increasing interest in Demand-Side Manage ment (DSM) by ut ilities and regulators throughout the country. With this interest, the re is an increasing need for DSM evaluation. Regulators expect utility engineers to use least cost planning and integrated resource planning approaches to adjust their generation capacity plans to reflect DSM. increasingly, utilities are considering DSM to affect their T&D capaci ty plans. One utility CEO recently commented that no major distributio n enhancements will be made until all DSM options have been exhausted. However, major utility DSM programs are less than a decade old. This leaves many utility engineers uneasy. How do they know that DSM will b e there when they really need it? To verify and improve the contributi on of DSM programs, utility analysts have developed a set of methodolo gies and procedures for evaluating DSM. The purpose of this panel sess ion was to review these state of the art evaluations and the lessons l earned from them so far. We explore the differences inherent in evalua ting DSM at the T&D level versus the generation level, and we review D SM's persistence and reliability in the residential, commercial, and i ndustrial sectors.