IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aen/journl/ej38-6-pon.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effect of Information on TOU Electricity Use: an Irish residential study

Author

Listed:
  • Shirley Pon

Abstract

Flexibility is becoming an increasingly important attribute of conventional generators due to the challenges imposed by the unpredictable, highly variable and non-controllable nature of renewable supply. Paradoxically, flexible units are currently being mothballed or retired in Europe due to financial losses. We investigate an energy-only market design, referred to as operating reserve demand curves, that rewards flexibility by adjusting the real-time energy price to a level that reflects the value of capacity under conditions of scarcity. We test the performance of the mechanism by developing a model of the Belgian electricity market, which is validated against the historical outcomes of the market over a study period of 21 months. We verify that (i) based on the observed market outcomes of our study period, none of the existing combined cycle gas turbines of the Belgian market can cover their investment costs, and (ii) the introduction of price adders that reflect the true value of scarce flexible capacity restores economic viability for most combined cycle gas turbines in the Belgian market.

Suggested Citation

  • Shirley Pon, 2017. "The Effect of Information on TOU Electricity Use: an Irish residential study," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 6).
    • Handle: RePEc:aen:journl:ej38-6-pon
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/ejarticle.aspx?id=3002
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to IAEE members and subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gilbert, Ben & Graff Zivin, Joshua, 2014. "Dynamic salience with intermittent billing: Evidence from smart electricity meters," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 107(PA), pages 176-190.
    2. Valeria Di Cosmo, Sean Lyons, and Anne Nolan, 2014. "Estimating the Impact of Time-of-Use Pricing on Irish Electricity Demand," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2).
    3. Newsham, Guy R. & Bowker, Brent G., 2010. "The effect of utility time-varying pricing and load control strategies on residential summer peak electricity use: A review," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(7), pages 3289-3296, July.
    4. Mostafa Baladi, S. & Herriges, Joseph A. & Sweeney, Thomas J., 1998. "Residential response to voluntary time-of-use electricity rates," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 225-244, September.
    5. Victor Stango & Jonathan Zinman, 2014. "Limited and Varying Consumer Attention: Evidence from Shocks to the Salience of Bank Overdraft Fees," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(4), pages 990-1030.
    6. Sridhar Narayanan & Pradeep Chintagunta & Eugenio Miravete, 2007. "The role of self selection, usage uncertainty and learning in the demand for local telephone service," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 1-34, March.
    7. Gans, Will & Alberini, Anna & Longo, Alberto, 2013. "Smart meter devices and the effect of feedback on residential electricity consumption: Evidence from a natural experiment in Northern Ireland," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 729-743.
    8. Carroll, James & Lyons, Seán & Denny, Eleanor, 2014. "Reducing household electricity demand through smart metering: The role of improved information about energy saving," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 234-243.
    9. Joachain, Hélène & Klopfert, Frédéric, 2014. "Smarter than metering? Coupling smart meters and complementary currencies to reinforce the motivation of households for energy savings," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 89-96.
    10. Katrina Jessoe & David Rapson, 2014. "Knowledge Is (Less) Power: Experimental Evidence from Residential Energy Use," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(4), pages 1417-1438, April.
    11. Itai Ater & Vardit Landsman, 2013. "Do Customers Learn from Experience? Evidence from Retail Banking," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(9), pages 2019-2035, September.
    12. Brounen, Dirk & Kok, Nils & Quigley, John M., 2013. "Energy literacy, awareness, and conservation behavior of residential households," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 42-50.
    13. Frank A. Wolak, 2011. "Do Residential Customers Respond to Hourly Prices? Evidence from a Dynamic Pricing Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 83-87, May.
    14. Torriti, Jacopo, 2012. "Price-based demand side management: Assessing the impacts of time-of-use tariffs on residential electricity demand and peak shifting in Northern Italy," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 576-583.
    15. Sexton, Richard J & Johnson, Nancy Brown & Konakayama, Akira, 1987. "Consumer Response to Continuous-Display Electricity-Use Monitors in a Time-of-Use Pricing Experiment," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 14(1), pages 55-62, June.
    16. Ahmad Faruqui, Sanem Sergici, and Lamine Akaba, 2014. "The Impact of Dynamic Pricing on Residential and Small Commercial and Industrial Usage: New Experimental Evidence from Connecticut," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1).
    17. Wichman, Casey J., 2017. "Information provision and consumer behavior: A natural experiment in billing frequency," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 13-33.
    18. Hunt Allcott & Todd Rogers, 2014. "The Short-Run and Long-Run Effects of Behavioral Interventions: Experimental Evidence from Energy Conservation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(10), pages 3003-3037, October.
    19. Sebastien Houde, Annika Todd, Anant Sudarshan, June A. Flora , and K. Carrie Armel, 2013. "Real-time Feedback and Electricity Consumption: A Field Experiment Assessing the Potential for Savings and Persistence," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1).
    20. Iacus, Stefano M. & King, Gary & Porro, Giuseppe, 2012. "Causal Inference without Balance Checking: Coarsened Exact Matching," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 1-24, January.
    21. Hargreaves, Tom & Nye, Michael & Burgess, Jacquelin, 2013. "Keeping energy visible? Exploring how householders interact with feedback from smart energy monitors in the longer term," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 126-134.
    22. Richins, Marsha L. & Bloch, Peter H., 1991. "Post-purchase product satisfaction: Incorporating the effects of involvement and time," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 145-158, September.
    23. Isamu Matsukawa, 2004. "The Effects of Information on Residential Demand for Electricity," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1), pages 1-18.
    24. Steve A. Fenrick, Lullit Getachew, Chris Ivanov, and Jeff Smith, 2014. "Demand Impact of a Critical Peak Pricing Program: Opt-in and Opt-out Options, Green Attitudes and Other Customer Characteristics," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3).
    25. Gerpott, Torsten J. & Paukert, Mathias, 2013. "Determinants of willingness to pay for smart meters: An empirical analysis of household customers in Germany," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 483-495.
    26. Ivanov, Chris & Getachew, Lullit & Fenrick, Steve A. & Vittetoe, Bethany, 2013. "Enabling technologies and energy savings: The case of EnergyWise Smart Meter Pilot of Connexus Energy," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 76-84.
    27. Richins, Marsha L & Bloch, Peter H, 1986. "After the New Wears Off: The Temporal Context of Product Involvement," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 13(2), pages 280-285, September.
    28. Eugenio J. Miravete, 2003. "Choosing the Wrong Calling Plan? Ignorance and Learning," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 297-310, March.
    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


    Cited by:

    1. Dorothee Charlier and Berangere Legendre, 2019. "A Multidimensional Approach to Measuring Fuel Poverty," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2).
    2. Liddle, Brantley & Loi, Tian Sheng Allan & Owen, Anthony D. & Tao, Jacqueline, 2020. "Evaluating consumption and cost savings from new air-conditioner purchases: The case of Singapore," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    3. Manuel Frondel and Gerhard Kussel, 2019. "Switching on Electricity Demand Response: Evidence for German Households," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 5).
    4. Dato, Prudence & Durmaz, Tunç & Pommeret, Aude, 2020. "Smart grids and renewable electricity generation by households," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    5. Nemati, Mehdi & Penn, Jerrod, 2018. "The Impact of Social Norms, Feedback, and Price Information on Conservation Behavior: A Meta-Analysis," 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, D.C. 274431, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    6. Puja Singhal, 2020. "Inform Me When It Matters: Cost Salience, Energy Consumption, and Efficiency Investments," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1891, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pon, Shirley, 2015. "Effectiveness of Real Time Information Provision with Time of Use Pricing," FCN Working Papers 8/2015, E.ON Energy Research Center, Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN), revised Oct 2015.
    2. Strong, Derek Ryan, 2017. "The Early Diffusion of Smart Meters in the US Electric Power Industry," Thesis Commons 7zprk, Center for Open Science.
    3. Batalla-Bejerano, Joan & Trujillo-Baute, Elisa & Villa-Arrieta, Manuel, 2020. "Smart meters and consumer behaviour: Insights from the empirical literature," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    4. Matsukawa, Isamu, 2018. "Information acquisition and residential electricity consumption: Evidence from a field experiment," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 1-19.
    5. Aydin, Erdal & Brounen, Dirk & Kok, Nils, 2018. "Information provision and energy consumption: Evidence from a field experiment," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 403-410.
    6. Dorothee Charlier and Berangere Legendre, 2019. "A Multidimensional Approach to Measuring Fuel Poverty," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2).
    7. Iztok Podbregar & Sanja Filipović & Mirjana Radovanović & Olga Mirković Isaeva & Polona Šprajc, 2021. "Electricity Prices and Consumer Behavior, Case Study Serbia—Randomized Control Trials Method," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-12, January.
    8. Ruokamo, Enni & Meriläinen, Teemu & Karhinen, Santtu & Räihä, Jouni & Suur-Uski, Päivi & Timonen, Leila & Svento, Rauli, 2022. "The effect of information nudges on energy saving: Observations from a randomized field experiment in Finland," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    9. Michael K. Price, 2014. "Using field experiments to address environmental externalities and resource scarcity: major lessons learned and new directions for future research," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 30(4), pages 621-638.
    10. Cardella, Eric & Ewing, Brad & Williams, Ryan Blake, 2018. "Green is Good – The Impact of Information Nudges on the Adoption of Voluntary Green Power Plans," 2018 Annual Meeting, February 2-6, 2018, Jacksonville, Florida 266583, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    11. Buckley, Penelope, 2020. "Prices, information and nudges for residential electricity conservation: A meta-analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    12. Khosrowpour, Ardalan & Jain, Rishee K. & Taylor, John E. & Peschiera, Gabriel & Chen, Jiayu & Gulbinas, Rimas, 2018. "A review of occupant energy feedback research: Opportunities for methodological fusion at the intersection of experimentation, analytics, surveys and simulation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 218(C), pages 304-316.
    13. Ramos, A. & Gago, A. & Labandeira, X. & Linares, P., 2015. "The role of information for energy efficiency in the residential sector," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(S1), pages 17-29.
    14. Werthschulte, Madeline & Löschel, Andreas, 2021. "On the role of present bias and biased price beliefs in household energy consumption," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    15. d'Adda, Giovanna & Galliera, Arianna & Tavoni, Massimo, 2020. "Urgency and engagement: Empirical evidence from a large-scale intervention on energy use awareness," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    16. Kang, Jieyi & Reiner, David M., 2022. "What is the effect of weather on household electricity consumption? Empirical evidence from Ireland," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    17. Werthschulte, Madeline, 2023. "Present focus and billing systems: Testing ‘pay-as-you-go’ vs. ‘pay-later’," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 108-121.
    18. Lynham, John & Nitta, Kohei & Saijo, Tatsuyoshi & Tarui, Nori, 2016. "Why does real-time information reduce energy consumption?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 173-181.
    19. Giraudet, Louis-Gaëtan, 2020. "Energy efficiency as a credence good: A review of informational barriers to energy savings in the building sector," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    20. Andreas Gerster & Mark A. Andor & Lorenz Götte, 2020. "Disaggregate Consumption Feedback and Energy Conservation," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2020_182, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F0 - International Economics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aen:journl:ej38-6-pon. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: David Williams (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iaeeeea.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.