Customer response on price incentives

Pål C. Næsje, Thale K. Andersen, and Hanne Sæle, SINTEF

Keywords

automatic meter reading (AMR), Remote load control (RLC), socio-economic consumer analysis, attitudes, behaviour, energy consumption

Abstract

This paper analyses the relation between end-users energy attitudes and their corresponding energy behaviour. It presents empirical findings from analyses of the effects of two-way communication between consumers and power companies. Two-way communication has made available high quality data on energy consumption. In the build-up to the analysis in this paper the a number of aspects thought to influence energy consumption has been looked at; including standard of housing, number and age of residents, as well as socio-economic factors, behaviour and preferences. Here we choose to focus specifically on attitudes and behaviour. These aspects are controlled for price incentives.

The combination of very tight peak power balance in the Nordic power system and few investments in extension of power networks has turned the focus towards manual or automatic demand-response which requires hourly metering for documentation. The data are two-fold: Hourly recordings of meter-data of electric consumption of 10 894 customers (nearly half of these had installed technology for remote load control) in two different network areas and survey-data from a questionnaire distributed to consumers that resulted in nearly 550 answers. During the winter 2003/2004 these customers were offered different price incentives. The analyses showed a net reduction in electricity consumption of 1,0 kWh/h at the most in peak load hours.

The paper is based on two connected studies, "End-user flexibility by efficient use of ICT" and "Improving end-user knowledge for managing energy loads end consumption" conducted in Norway by the SINTEF group.