Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center

2005-06 Seminars

Temperature Effects on Residential Electric Price Response

Karen Herter
Lawrence Berkeley Lab

Abstract
Deregulation efforts and electric system failures in the U.S. and around the world have inspired a heightened interest in electric reliability issues. While system planners push for increased supply capacity, conservation advocates lobby for methods of controlling demand. This talk will summarize the results from an exploratory analysis of residential customer response to a dynamic rate that was designed to reduce peak electricity consumption. Under the critical peak pricing (CPP) experiment, local electricity distribution companies dispatched high peak prices fifteen times per year and measured household electricity use in 15-minute intervals. We found statistically significant load reduction for participants both with and without automated end-use control technologies.

During five-hour critical peak periods, participants without control technology used up to 13% less energy than they did during normal peak periods. Participants equipped with programmable communicating thermostats used 25% and 41% less for five and two-hour critical events, respectively.

Thus, this study offers convincing evidence that the residential sector can provide substantial contributions to retail demand response, which is considered a potential tool for mitigating market power, stabilizing wholesale market prices, managing system reliability, and maintaining system resource adequacy.

Slides (PPT File)