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Nudging electricity consumption using TOU pricing and feedback: evidence from Irish households

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  • Cosmo, Valeria Di
  • O’Hora, Denis

Abstract

This paper analyses the electricity usage of 5000 Irish residential consumers in response to the introduction of Time Of Use (TOU) tariffs and three different forms of financial feedback: immediate feedback from in-home displays (IHD), monthly billing and bimonthly billing. Half-hourly data on consumption collected during the trial indicated that TOU tariffs reduced consumption at peak, with some reductions lasting beyond the end of the peak period and post-peak spikes in usage were not observed. IHD feedback resulted in the most reliable reductions and bimonthly billing the least. Moreover, consumers slightly increase the electricity usage during the first hours of the night and early in the morning. Households with greater education react to the information associated to the TOU tariffs slightly more than the average.

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  • Cosmo, Valeria Di & O’Hora, Denis, 2017. "Nudging electricity consumption using TOU pricing and feedback: evidence from Irish households," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 1-14.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:61:y:2017:i:c:p:1-14
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2017.03.005
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    8. Eoghan O'Neill & Melvyn Weeks, 2018. "Causal Tree Estimation of Heterogeneous Household Response to Time-Of-Use Electricity Pricing Schemes," Papers 1810.09179, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2019.
    9. Barjaková, Martina & Belton, Cameron & Purcell, Karl & Lunn, Pete, 2021. "Efficient ways of communicating time-of-use electricity tariffs in Ireland: Plain and simple," Papers WP704, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
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