Energy Efficiency & User BehaviourIEA DSM Task 24

“Energy Efficiency and Behavioral Change”

Energy Behaviour and Smart Meter

Simon MoserEnergy Institute at the Johannes Kepler University of Linz

moser@energieinstitut-linz.at

Graz/Austria, 2014-10-13

Content

• The “smart“ meter

• Microeconomic theory

• Providing the smart meter’s information

• Field test results & biases

• Persistence of savings

2

mos

er@

ener

giei

nstit

ut-li

nz.a

t

The „smart“ meter

• The “smart“ meter

• Meter readings: frequently or near real time

• Able to communicate

• Advantages when installed:

• uncomplicated provision of data

• automated use of and functions

3

mos

er@

ener

giei

nstit

ut-li

nz.a

t

Microeconomic theory

• Asymmetric information � inefficient quantities

• Bill: Price and quantity (kWh) per year

• Price for the quantity (kWh)

• Quantity (kWh) for the sum of actions

• � Missing information: price for one action

• Consumption information based on frequent meter readings:

• Interval (daily / hourly) or real time consumption = hint for kWh/action

• No evidence on actual consumption

• No price connected (fix price components remain)

• Feedback theoretically leads to more efficient consumption• Adoptions in behaviour of energy/electricity consumption• Adoptions in appliance stock (which in turn is consumption behaviour) 4

mos

er@

ener

giei

nstit

ut-li

nz.a

t

Providing the smart meter’s information

5

mos

er@

ener

giei

nstit

ut-li

nz.a

t

Medium xy xzSeriousness of

informationReal Time

InformationPersistency of

impact

Postal Mail

E-Mail

Website

App (Tablet)

App (Smartphone)

SMS

Callcenter

In-House-Display

Meter‘s display

Ambient Equipment

Field test results• International results

• meta study from Sarah Darby (ECI Oxford)

• 2,5 % savings due to IHD in UK households (real life)

• Rather incomparable to other countries (Consumption volumes, appliances, …)

• Region Germany – Austria – Switzerland (number of studies reviewed = 10)

6

mos

er@

ener

giei

nstit

ut-li

nz.a

t

Medium < 2 % 2 – 5 % > 5 %

Monthly Mail 1 2 1*

Website 1 4 1*

In-House-Display 1 4 1*

Ambient Equipment 1 - -

• Many problems with biases like selection of participants, number of participants, methodsof calculation

• * 11% by combining website, app and mail. However: no provision of n and CI

Kollmann, Moser, de Bruyn, Schwarz, Fehringer (2013): Smart Metering in the Contextof Smart Grids. Final project report, in German.

Biases of field test results

• Participants = persons interested

• When feedback is provided, they are more engaged than average people

• Thus the observed impact is higher than what the impact would be in the whole/real population

• Participants = persons interested

• As they are interested, participants had known about loads, appliance consumption etc. and had already adopted their consumption patterns and appliances even before the feedback was provided

• When feedback is provided, they are also more engaged than average people but find less opportunities.

• Thus the observed impact is lower than what the impact would be in the whole/real population

• Same starting point, different results � only little empirical evidence on biases 7

mos

er@

ener

giei

nstit

ut-li

nz.a

t

Persistency of savings

• „People look at the In-House-Display for 3 months and then they are not interested any more“.

• Results on persistency in load shift experiments are ambiguous

• CONSTANT

• Savings due to Critical Peak Pricing: 12% in year 1, 13% in year 2 (Faruqui and Sergici, 2010)

• “Constant savings in test period” (eTelligence, Agsten et al., 2012)

• “Interest remained in year 2” (Smart-A, Kollmann et al., 2014)

• Manual reactions in response to real-time pricing remained for a long period” (Hillemacher et al., 2013)

• “Constant participation” (Karg et al., 2013)

• REDUCED

• Participation decreases to 33% after 3 months (Frey, 2013)

• Many expert interviews mention decreasing interest

• Is any more interest necessary after behaviour and appliances are adopted?8

mos

er@

ener

giei

nstit

ut-li

nz.a

t

Thank you for your attention !

9

mos

er@

ener

giei

nstit

ut-li

nz.a

t

Simon MoserEnergy Institute at the Johannes Kepler

University of Linz

moser@energieinstitut-linz.atT: +43 732 2468 5658