Getting smarter about household energy: the who and what of demand for smart meters

ABSTRACT The development of policies promoting smart meter adoption is essential to guide the transition towards sustainable use of resources such as water, electricity and gas, as well as inform smart-city initiatives. This article explores household preferences in terms of different smart meters and identifies the amounts that households are willing to pay for different smart meter configurations to monitor electricity, water and gas based on the features of their home including dwelling type, size and property value. To this aim, we employ a mixed multinomial logit model that accounts for the heterogeneity in customers’ preferences for different smart meters. As a proof of concept, the proposed model is applied to a survey incorporating a discrete choice experiment carried out with 232 respondents in the Florianopolis metropolitan region, located in the south of Brazil. Our approach offers a number of advantages to facilitate the broader implementation of smart grid systems that would otherwise be overlooked using traditional approaches that rely on aggregated estimates for demand and willingness to pay for proposed schemes.

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