PJM Interconnection is a regional transmission organization (RTO) that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity in all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia. To learn more on PJM Demand Response, click here.

Demand Response programs in PJM

Economic Programs

PJM Economic Load Response enables Demand Resources to voluntarily respond to PJM Locational Marginal Price ("LMP") prices by reducing consumption and receiving a payment for the reduction. Economic Load Response provides direct access to the wholesale market for customers that can curtail consumption when PJM LMP prices reach a level where it makes economic sense. The Day-Ahead version gives customers the opportunity to reduce the load they draw from the PJM system in advance of real-time operations and receive payments based on the day-ahead LMP for the reductions. While participation in Economic Load Response is strictly voluntary, customers participating in the Day-Ahead market are making a firm commitment to supply load reductions during the hours that their bid cleared.

Reliability Programs

With the implementation of the Reliability Pricing Model (RPM) forward capacity model, demand customers can offer demand response as a forward capacity resource. Demand response providers can submit offers to provide a demand reduction as a capacity resource in the forward RPM auctions. If these demand response offers are cleared in the RPM auction, the demand response provider will be committed to provide the cleared demand response amount as capacity during the delivery year and will receive the capacity resource clearing price for this service. PJM administers the Full Emergency Load Response program as Interruptible Load for Reliability (ILR).

Ancillary Services Programs

Demand resources can participate in either Synchronous Reserve or Regulation markets in PJM. Demand resources that choose to participate in either market must: (1) respond within ten minutes, and (2) have metering capable of a one minute scan rate to verify compliance with a called event. These markets are cleared every hour based on the offers that are submitted by various resources. The market clearing results establish the synchronized reserve assignments for each cleared resource in order to meet the synchronized or regulation requirement for the entire market and for any constrained sub-regions of the market. Each assigned resource is paid the synchronized reserve or regulation clearing price for providing the service for the hour. The overall participation by demand resources is currently limited to 25% of the Synchronized Reserve or Regulation requirement in each Reserve Zone.

Program Summary