Can the right combination of technology and economic incentives get utility customers to turn down megawatts of power use fast enough to balance wind power’s ups and downs? Honeywell and Hawaiian Electric Co. (HECO) are going to try it out on the island of Oahu, using Honeywell’s automated demand response technology.

Under the two-year pilot announced Thursday, HECO plans to offer customers lucrative incentives to turn over their power loads — factory motors and process lines, lights, air conditioners and the like — to allow them to be turned down within 10 minutes’ notice. Honeywell will connect the utility to customers with its Akuacom demand response servers, which use a standard called OpenADR.

via Balancing Hawaiian Wind Power With Demand Response : Greentech Media.