Flying Demand Response

::: nBlog :::

Yesterday while I was driving to Helsinki-Vantaa airport, I got a simple SMS message from Finnair, asking whether I wanted to upgrade to business class with 9k frequent flyer miles. Answering just U completed the whole process, and I got a new boarding pass in the next SMS a few seconds later.

Within Finnair, this is all about making sure that planes carry a maximum amount of passengers at any given flight. The reason for my SMS was probably that there was space in the business class, but economy was sold out, so an automatic algorithm made a decision to ask for my help to increase revenue by selling my economy ticket to a new passenger.

Energy utilities are usually funded by the consumers in a more or less regulated way. In countries like Finland with seasonally changing energy usage patterns, electricity and heating networks and production are planned to meet the maximum demand, while during the summer months up to 40% of production capacity may rest idle.

Upon the rollout of Smart Grid technology, utilities would be more than capable of introducing granular demand response systems involving large and small customers and even consumers. “Take Sauna today, get free electricity tomorrow?”

Now it is just a question of who’s going to do it first.

//Pasi