Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Rethinking real-time electricity pricing

Contents:

Author Info

  • Allcott, Hunt
Registered author(s):

    Abstract

    Most US consumers are charged a near-constant retail price for electricity, despite substantial hourly variation in the wholesale market price. This paper evaluates the first program to expose residential consumers to hourly real-time pricing (RTP). I find that enrolled households are statistically significantly price elastic and that consumers responded by conserving energy during peak hours, but remarkably did not increase average consumption during off-peak times. The program increased consumer surplus by $10 per household per year. While this is only one to two percent of electricity costs, it illustrates a potential additional benefit from investment in retail Smart Grid applications, including the advanced electricity meters required to observe a household’s hourly consumption.

    Download Info

    If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092876551100042X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

    Bibliographic Info

    Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Resource and Energy Economics.

    Volume (Year): 33 (2011)
    Issue (Month): 4 ()
    Pages: 820-842

    as in new window
    Handle: RePEc:eee:resene:v:33:y:2011:i:4:p:820-842

    Contact details of provider:
    Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505569

    Related research

    Keywords: Real time electricity pricing; Energy demand; Randomized field experiments;

    Find related papers by JEL classification:

    References

    References listed on IDEAS
    Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
    as in new window
    1. Paul Joskow & Jean Tirole, 2006. "Retail electricity competition," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(4), pages 799-815, December.
    2. Herriges, Joseph A. & Baladi, S. M. & Caves, Douglas W. & Neenan, B. F., 1993. "The Response of Industrial Customers to Electric Rates Based Upon Dynamic Marginal Costs," Staff General Research Papers 1497, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    3. Severin Borenstein & Stephen P. Holland, 2003. "On the Efficiency of Competitive Electricity Markets With Time-Invariant Retail Prices," NBER Working Papers 9922, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Joskow, Paul L & Tirole, Jean, 2007. "Reliability and Competitive Electricity Markets," CEPR Discussion Papers 6121, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Robert H. Patrick & Frank A. Wolak, 2001. "Estimating the Customer-Level Demand for Electricity Under Real-Time Market Prices," NBER Working Papers 8213, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Jaffe, Adam B. & Stavins, Robert N., 1994. "The energy paradox and the diffusion of conservation technology," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 91-122, May.
    7. Kenneth Train & Gil Mehrez, 1994. "Optional Time-of-Use Prices for Electricity: Econometric Analysis of Surplus and Pareto Impacts," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 25(2), pages 263-283, Summer.
    8. Severin Borenstein, 2007. "Wealth Transfers Among Large Customers from Implementing Real-Time Retail Electricity Pricing," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2), pages 131-150.
    9. Thomas Taylor & Peter Schwarz & James Cochell, 2005. "24/7 Hourly Response to Electricity Real-Time Pricing with up to Eight Summers of Experience," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 27(3), pages 235-262, 01.
    10. Stephen P. Holland & Erin T. Mansur, 2006. "The Short-Run Effects of Time-Varying Prices in Competitive Electricity Markets," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 4), pages 127-156.
    11. Stephen P. Holland & Erin T. Mansur, 2007. "Is Real-Time Pricing Green? The Environmental Impacts of Electricity Demand Variance," NBER Working Papers 13508, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Peter C. Reiss & Matthew W. White, 2008. "What changes energy consumption? Prices and public pressures," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(3), pages 636-663.
    13. Aigner, Dennis J., 1984. "The welfare econometrics of peak-load pricing for electricity : Editor's Introduction," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1-2), pages 1-15.
    14. Severin Borenstein, 2005. "The Long-Run Efficiency of Real-Time Electricity Pricing," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3), pages 93-116.
    15. Lucas W. Davis, 2008. "Durable goods and residential demand for energy and water: evidence from a field trial," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(2), pages 530-546.
    16. Bandt, William D. & Campbell, Tom & Danner, Carl & Demsetz, Harold & Faruqui, Ahmad & Kleindorfer, Paul R. & Lawrence, Robert Z. & Levine, David & McLeod, Phil & Michaels, Robert J. & Oren, Shmuel S. , 2003. "2003 Manifesto on the California Electricity Crisis," Working paper 369, Regulation2point0.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as in new window

    Cited by:
    1. Léautier, Thomas-Olivier, 2012. "Is mandating "smart meters" smart?," IDEI Working Papers 747, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    2. Heshmati, Almas, 2012. "Survey of Models on Demand, Customer Base-Line and Demand Response and Their Relationships in the Power Market," IZA Discussion Papers 6637, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).

    Lists

    This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:resene:v:33:y:2011:i:4:p:820-842

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Wendy Shamier).

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

    If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.