Increasing block rate: a burden on the road towards energy efficiency in Italy?

摘要

In Italy there are approximately 35 million smart meters and about 20 million customers have beenrnbilled according to a mandatory Time-of-Use tariff since July 2010. RSE has been monitoring thernimpact of such tariff among residential customers, obtaining some interesting results, and is alsorncurrently involved in the S3C European project, whose main goal is to empower “smart” customers tornparticipate in active demand and electricity supply system efficiency.rnTime dependent tariffs can indeed induce a more efficient use of electricity from the overallrnsystem point of view. From the customer point of view, increasing energy efficiency is related to thernuse of technologies which “do the same (or even more) with less”: within this context, heat pumpsrnhave a strong potential and deserve initiatives to promote them and to overcome the barriers to theirrndevelopment.rnIn Italy, one of the main barriers is the current electricity tariff for “franchise customers”. Forrnthe residential customers, such a tariff is an increasing block rate: i.e. the higher the consumption, thernhigher the price per kWh paid, due to the progressive increase of the weight of various charges andrntaxes. An increasing block rate penalizes customers with high consumption, even though this is arnconsequence of efficient electric end-use technologies, such as heat pumps, which allow for arnreduction of primary energy (fossil fuels) consumption. On the other side, fossil fuel consumption isrnbilled with a decreasing block rate, which make the situation even more penalizing for those willing tornswitch from fuel to electricity.rnIn order to overcome this barrier, the current Italian regulation allows a residential customer tornsign an additional contract (with the installation of an additional meter) specifically dedicated to thernsupply of a heat pump for domestic use. The consumptions measured by such additional smart meterrnare billed with a flat tariff (so called “other usages” tariff), instead of an increasing block rate.rnNevertheless, the activation of the “other usages” supply is expensive (about 500 €) and the fixedrnannual costs of the flat tariff are much higher than the fixed costs of the standard residential tariff (301rn€/year vs. 43 €/year).rnRSE is currently exploring the feasibility of some possible solutions, such as the installation ofrnan additional smart meter in series with the main one, with the consequent billing of the consumptionrnwith a flat tariff, but within the context of the same supply contract signed for “domestic usages”;rnanother possibility might be introducing an increasing block rate together with variable tiers, whosernsize depends on the efficiency of the owned appliances (i.e. higher for those who have a heat pumprnand lower for those who have an electric water heater) or on the number of components of the family.rnApart from tariffs, RSE is also considering the installation of specific tools to monitor thernperformance of heat pumps, in order to warn the customer of possible low performances or to makernhim/her aware of the advantages with respect to traditional technologies.rnThis paper will present the result of the analysis on the impact of the Time-of-Use tariff on thernItalian customers, showing how such tariff has been capable of changing users’ electricityrnconsumption habits to a certain extent. It will also compare the above mentioned possibilities to boostrnthe diffusion of efficient technologies such as heat pumps by lowering the barriers faced by therncustomers, therefore improving the overall efficiency of the energy system.