Electricity supply is increasingly dominated by distributed variable renewables and electricity demand is growing. In this context, ensuring that people and businesses can, and are willing to, use electricity flexibly is paramount. Without flexibility, decarbonisation will be more difficult and more costly. Electricity grids are sized to meet peak demand, so reducing or shifting demand away from peak is crucial to reducing costs and freeing up grid access to new energy transition technologies. To understand better the behavioural dimensions of this issue, the Users TCP, and EnR curated a session at the BEHAVE conference as part of the Memorandum of Understanding between the two organisations.
A scene-setting presentation of a recent Users TCP and 4E TCP EDNA Platform joint project from Regina Hemm (Austrian Institute of Technology) explained how the technical flexibility potential of heat pumps and electric vehicles could be significantly reduced, depending on the behavioural responses of end-users, highlighting the scope for policy to influence real world outcomes (read the full report here).
Nicole de Koning (TNO, Netherlands) presented insights from a field study on the stated willingness of people to provide flexibility, finding that financial incentives were the most important factor and that people did not really understand the value of flexibility to the energy system.
Ondřej Kácha (The Behaviouralist, UK) rounded off the session with emerging evidence from randomised control trials, confirming Nicole’s finding around financial incentives as well as revealing that tariff features such as bill assurance and easy switch-back can drive up more sign-ups, while simply switching to a Time-of-Use tariff yields moderate peak shifting without further consumer engagement.
