Updated April 2026

AKA Peak Events or Peak Hours — Learn what it means for you, the grid, and your electric bill.

Extreme weather is putting unprecedented strain on the electric grid. Hotter summers and colder winters mean more people turning up their heating and air conditioners—and that creates demand spikes that can overwhelm electricity supply. That’s where demand response comes in.

Demand Response Defined

Demand response (DR) is a strategy utilities use to balance electricity supply and demand during peak periods. When demand threatens to outpace supply—typically during extreme temperatures or infrastructure stress—utilities call a “demand response event” (sometimes called “Conservation Events”, “Peak Events” or “Peak Hours”), and ask customers to temporarily reduce consumption. Customers are rewarded for participation, often via bill credits, gift cards, or flat incentives.

FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) has recognized DR as a critical resource for grid reliability, allowing it to participate in wholesale energy markets alongside traditional generation.

DR Benefits for the Grid and Customers

For utilities, demand response provides an economical alternative to building costly new generation or transmission capacity. It delivers reliable load reductions during critical periods: during summer 2025 heatwaves, Uplight ran 45 unique events across 16 different utility programs, representing 350 megawatts of energy load under management—enough to power about 300,000 homes.

For customers, participation can mean meaningful savings on electricity bills and contributing to community grid stability.

Types of Demand Response Programs

Automated demand response uses connected devices like smart thermostats, batteries, water heater switches, and EV chargers to adjust consumption automatically, while rewarding customers for participation. Alabama Power and Georgia Power have built successful automated programs that deliver sustained demand reduction while maintaining customer comfort.

Behavioral demand response notifies customers before events and encourages voluntary conservation in exchange for incentives. These programs can be more accessible to those who don’t have smart thermostats and combine proactive notifications with personalized energy insights to motivate participation. Utilities are finding success with customer-centric approaches to shift EV charging to off-peak hours, rewarding customers for adjusting when they charge.

How Demand Response Events Work

Utilities monitor grid conditions and forecast demand. When they anticipate supply constraints, they’ll call an event—usually with advance notice via email or app notification. During the event window (often afternoon hours on hot days, or morning/evening periods in winter), participating customers either see automatic adjustments on their smart thermostats or can take action themselves. Customer comfort is of the utmost importance––customers should only see slight temperature variations and have the ability to opt of any event if needed.

Modern demand response programs leverage intelligent forecasting to dispatch events efficiently. With Uplight’s Predictive Capacity Dispatch, utilities can achieve up to 98% forecast accuracy 24 hours before an event and less than 5% variability in load shift performance.

Demand response also plays a critical role in helping utilities avoid outages during extreme conditions. Evergy’s Grid Resiliency program earned an SECC Best Practices Award recognition for its approach to managing peak demand: the program dispatches all ecobee smart thermostats—regardless of enrollment status—while keeping customers comfortable and in control through an opt-out option.

And, while DR is often associated with summer cooling, winter demand response is increasingly important as heating loads grow.

How Utilities are Getting Customers to Enroll in DR

Some utilities leverage Marketplaces to offer heavily discounted energy-efficient devices—sometimes selling free smart thermostats that are pre-enrolled in DR. Orange & Rockland drive 5,000+ DR enrollments through its Marketplace offers and strategic marketing.

Surfacing personalized insights and program recommendations in Home Energy Reports and customer portals can help engage, enroll, and retain customers.

The Role of Smart Devices and DERMS

Behind the scenes, utilities are increasingly managing demand response through distributed energy resource management systems (DERMS) that orchestrate networks of connected devices. These platforms integrate with virtual power plant capabilities to treat aggregated customer assets as flexible grid resources—shifting or saving energy when it matters most.

Tips to Lower Bills During Peak Periods

Even without smart devices, customers can take action:

• Run laundry and dishwashers in the evenings or on weekends
• Set dishwashers to run overnight using the delay timer
• Pre-cool or pre-heat your home before peak hours
• Shift EV charging to overnight hours

How you respond during peak events affects grid stability for your whole community—and your wallet will thank you too.