What the next generation of demand response needs to look like Total Facilities 2012 speaker, MICHAEL ZIMMERMAN , BuildingIQ chief executive officer, provides an overview of the challenges involved in preparing buildings for interaction with smart grids, and details what the next generation of demand response needs to include. The promise and hype surrounding the smart grid far exceeds its current capabilities. In no area is this truer than with demand response (DR) programs for commercial buildings and the need for critical interaction between a smart grid and a smart building. In order to manage demands on the grid, utilities have created DR programs to provide financial incentives for building owners to reduce energy consumption during peak demand periods. Why would utilities pay end users to reduce power? The alternative is to build more power plants, which will cost the industry billions down the road. DR successes in our industry are trumpeted far and wide as utilities launch new programs and initial customer contracts are signed. There are, however, some fundamental issues looming for building owners and operators that have and will continue to limit the success of these programs as they are rolled out. These include: the risk to tenant service levels posed by DR events the execution complexities of intelligently managing through DR events, especially in large, complex buildings, and the capital requirements to fund the people or systems needed to ensure building owners and managers can address the above issues. DEMAND RESPONSE TODAY Current DR programs, which