Assessing the impact of real-time price visualization on residential electricity consumption, costs, and carbon emissions

The development of smart grid projects, with demand side management as an integral part, has led to an increased interest of households’ willingness to react to different types of demand response programs. This paper presents a pilot study assessing the impact of real-time price visualization on residential electricity consumption, and its effects on electricity costs and carbon (CO2eq) emissions. We analyze changes in electricity consumption based on a test group and a reference group of 12 households, respectively. To allow for analysis on load shift impact on CO2eq emissions, hourly dynamic CO2eq intensity of the Swedish electricity grid mix is calculated, using electricity generation data, trading data, and fuel-type specific emission factors. The results suggest that, on average, the test households shifted roughly 5% of their total daily electricity consumption from peak hours (of high electricity price) to off-peak hours (of low electricity price) as an effect of real-time price visualization. However, due to the mechanisms of the Swedish electricity market, with a negative relation between spot price and CO2eq intensity, the load shift led to a split effect; electricity costs modestly decreased while CO2eq emissions increased. In addition, any indication of the contribution of real-time spot price visualization to a reduction in overall household electricity consumption level could not be found, as the relative difference in consumption level between the test households and the reference households remained constant during both the baseline period and the test period.