IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v39y2011i5p2299-2309.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Accelerated electricity conservation in Juneau, Alaska: A study of household activities that reduced demand 25%

Author

Listed:
  • Leighty, Wayne
  • Meier, Alan

Abstract

An avalanche destroyed the main hydroelectric transmission line to Juneau, Alaska in April, 2008. Diesel-generated electricity was substituted, causing electricity prices to increase 500% for 45 days. Electricity demand fell by 25% during the supply disruption. Most of the reduction occurred before the higher rates were implemented. Some conservation - about 8% of historic consumption - persisted after the transmission line was repaired and prices returned to normal. Consumers reduced energy use through a combination of new habits and technical improvements. A survey of residential consumers indicated that the average household undertook 10 conservation actions, with major changes in lighting, space heating, fuel switching, and water and appliance use. We propose a method for prioritizing conservation actions for promotion according to their impact in electricity savings (as a function of popularity, effectiveness, and persistence) and a dynamic framework for electricity use before, during, and after a supply disruption (i.e., both the magnitude and rates of change in electricity conservation).

Suggested Citation

  • Leighty, Wayne & Meier, Alan, 2011. "Accelerated electricity conservation in Juneau, Alaska: A study of household activities that reduced demand 25%," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 2299-2309, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:39:y:2011:i:5:p:2299-2309
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301-4215(11)00051-6
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    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. Espey, James A. & Espey, Molly, 2004. "Turning on the Lights: A Meta-Analysis of Residential Electricity Demand Elasticities," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Southern Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 36(1), pages 1-17, April.
    2. Narayan, Paresh Kumar & Smyth, Russell & Prasad, Arti, 2007. "Electricity consumption in G7 countries: A panel cointegration analysis of residential demand elasticities," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(9), pages 4485-4494, September.
    3. Woods, James, 2008. "What people do when they say they are conserving electricity," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 1945-1956, June.
    4. Nakajima, Tadahiro & Hamori, Shigeyuki, 2010. "Change in consumer sensitivity to electricity prices in response to retail deregulation: A panel empirical analysis of the residential demand for electricity in the United States," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 2470-2476, May.
    5. Lester D. Taylor, 1975. "The Demand for Electricity: A Survey," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 6(1), pages 74-110, Spring.
    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. Peter Morris & Laurie Buys & Desley Vine, 2014. "Moving from Outsider to Insider: Peer Status and Partnerships between Electricity Utilities and Residential Consumers," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(6), pages 1-8, June.
    2. Lijun Zeng & Laijun Zhao & Qin Wang & Bingcheng Wang & Yuan Ma & Wei Cui & Yujing Xie, 2018. "Modeling Interprovincial Cooperative Energy Saving in China: An Electricity Utilization Perspective," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-25, January.
    3. Stamatios Ntanos & Grigorios L. Kyriakopoulos & Garyfallos Arabatzis & Vasilios Palios & Miltiadis Chalikias, 2018. "Environmental Behavior of Secondary Education Students: A Case Study at Central Greece," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-22, May.
    4. Lopes, M.A.R. & Antunes, C.H. & Martins, N., 2012. "Energy behaviours as promoters of energy efficiency: A 21st century review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 16(6), pages 4095-4104.
    5. Boudet, Hilary S. & Flora, June A. & Armel, K. Carrie, 2016. "Clustering household energy-saving behaviours by behavioural attribute," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 444-454.
    6. Nguyen Truong Son & Doan Hong Le & Dong Luu Nghiem & Doan Quynh Giang, 2022. "Factors Affecting Household s Intention to Save Power: The Case of Chau Thanh District Vietnam," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 12(2), pages 299-308, March.
    7. Osamu Kimura and Ken-Ichiro Nishio, 2016. "Responding to electricity shortfalls: Electricity-saving activities of households and firms in Japan after Fukushima," Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1).
    8. Jack Barkenbus, 2013. "Indoor Thermal Comfort: The Behavioral Component," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 5(4), pages 1-20, April.
    9. Desiderio Romero-Jordán & Pablo del Río & Cristina Peñasco, 2014. "Household electricity demand in Spanish regions. Public policy implications," Working Papers 2014/24, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    10. Tampakis, Stilianos & Arabatzis, Garyfallos & Tsantopoulos, Georgios & Rerras, Ioannis, 2017. "Citizens’ views on electricity use, savings and production from renewable energy sources: A case study from a Greek island," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 39-49.
    11. Tuan Khanh Vuong, 2024. "Factors Affecting Households’ Electricity-Saving Behaviour: A Perspective on Sustainable Development," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 14(4), pages 440-449, July.
    12. Wang, Jianming & Li, Yongqiang & He, Zhengxia & Gao, Jian & Wang, Jianguo, 2022. "Scale framing, benefit framing and their interaction effects on energy-saving behaviors: Evidence from urban residents of China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    13. Nicolas Astier, 2016. "Comparative Feedbacks under Incomplete Information," Working Papers hal-01465189, HAL.
    14. Gerard, Francois, 2013. "What Changes Energy Consumption, and for How Long? New Evidence from the 2001 Brazilian Electricity Crisis," RFF Working Paper Series dp-13-06, Resources for the Future.
    15. Desiderio Romero-Jordán & Pablo del Río & Cristina Peñasco, 2014. "Household electricity demand in Spanish regions. Public policy implications," Working Papers 2014/24, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    16. Astier, Nicolas, 2018. "Comparative feedbacks under incomplete information," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 90-108.

    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. Filippini, Massimo & Hirl, Bettina & Masiero, Giuliano, 2018. "Habits and rational behaviour in residential electricity demand," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 137-152.
    2. Massimo Filippini & Bettina Hirl & Giuliano Masiero, 2015. "Rational habits in residential electricity demand," IdEP Economic Papers 1506, USI Università della Svizzera italiana.
    3. Fullerton Jr., Thomas M. & Macias, David R. & Walke, Adam G., 2016. "Residential Electricity Demand in El Paso," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 46(2), December.
    4. Fullerton, Thomas M. & Juarez, David A. & Walke, Adam G., 2012. "Residential electricity consumption in Seattle," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 1693-1699.
    5. Pellini, Elisabetta, 2021. "Estimating income and price elasticities of residential electricity demand with Autometrics," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    6. Bernstein, Ronald & Madlener, Reinhard, 2011. "Responsiveness of Residential Electricity Demand in OECD Countries: A Panel Cointegation and Causality Analysis," FCN Working Papers 8/2011, E.ON Energy Research Center, Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN).
    7. Labandeira, Xavier & Labeaga, José M. & López-Otero, Xiral, 2017. "A meta-analysis on the price elasticity of energy demand," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 549-568.
    8. Fais, Birgit & Blesl, Markus & Fahl, Ulrich & Voß, Alfred, 2014. "Comparing different support schemes for renewable electricity in the scope of an energy systems analysis," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 479-489.
    9. Gautam, Tej K. & Paudel, Krishna P., 2018. "The demand for natural gas in the Northeastern United States," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 890-898.
    10. Hendrik Schmitz & Reinhard Madlener, 2020. "Heterogeneity in price responsiveness for residential space heating in Germany," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(5), pages 2255-2281, November.
    11. Fell, Harrison & Li, Shanjun & Paul, Anthony, 2014. "A new look at residential electricity demand using household expenditure data," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 37-47.
    12. Ivan Faiella & Luciano Lavecchia, 2021. "Households' energy demand and the effects of carbon pricing in Italy," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 614, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    13. Javier Bueno & Desiderio Romero-Jordán & Pablo del Río, 2020. "Analysing the Drivers of Electricity Demand in Spain after the Economic Crisis," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-18, October.
    14. Cho, Seong-Hoon & Kim, Taeyoung & Kim, Hyun Jae & Park, Kihyun & Roberts, Roland K., 2015. "Regionally-varying and regionally-uniform electricity pricing policies compared across four usage categories," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 182-191.
    15. Inglesi-Lotz, R., 2011. "The evolution of price elasticity of electricity demand in South Africa: A Kalman filter application," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 3690-3696, June.
    16. Woo, C.K. & Liu, Y. & Zarnikau, J. & Shiu, A. & Luo, X. & Kahrl, F., 2018. "Price elasticities of retail energy demands in the United States: New evidence from a panel of monthly data for 2001–2016," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 222(C), pages 460-474.
    17. Alberini, Anna & Filippini, Massimo, 2011. "Response of residential electricity demand to price: The effect of measurement error," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 889-895, September.
    18. Nakajima, Tadahiro & Hamori, Shigeyuki, 2010. "Change in consumer sensitivity to electricity prices in response to retail deregulation: A panel empirical analysis of the residential demand for electricity in the United States," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 2470-2476, May.
    19. Akihiro Otsuka, 2019. "Natural disasters and electricity consumption behavior: a case study of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake," Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, Springer, vol. 3(3), pages 887-910, October.
    20. Schulte, Isabella & Heindl, Peter, 2017. "Price and income elasticities of residential energy demand in Germany," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 512-528.

    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:eee:enepol:v:39:y:2011:i:5:p:2299-2309. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    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.