Potential and barriers for demand response at household customers

Smart Grids are often seen as an enabler for an electricity market with increased benefits for both consumers and environment. From a system level perspective, many advantages could be achieved by implementing these innovative technologies. Furthermore, implementing smart metering could give consumers possibilities to obtain a better understanding of their own electricity consumption. The information could also help consumers to react on price signals by adjusting their consumption patterns. Increased knowledge usually increase awareness and could therefore be positive for energy efficiency activities. In order to investigate the potential for increased consumer participation in the electricity market with respect to demand-response and micro generation, a questionnaire was sent out to the households in the town Eskilstuna. The purpose of this it paper is to describe the potential for demand response among households. Furthermore attitudes and enabler for demand response have been investigated. The household shows a quite positive attitude towards participation in demand response in this study. It was clear that households that live in houses are generally more interested in demand response compared to those living in apartments. In order to better understand how these positive attitudes could be realized for a more flexible electricity demand, the study pointed out that both economic incentives and environmental concerns were important drivers that motivates various consumer groups. It was noted that households living in apartment where more concerned of the environmental effects as compared to households in houses, which may influence on how business models may need to be adjusted when offered to different customer groups. The study also shows that relatively small economic compensation is required in order to realize demand response in apartments, wheras consumers in detached house requires more. Hence the potential for demand response based on price incentives seems promising for some households, however barriers were also identified such as distrust to the functioning of electricity market. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.