On the effectiveness of residential involuntary load curtailment programs

摘要

The critical peak hour problem is a fundamental issue for utility managers and policymakers. We address this issue by analyzing unique data from an involuntary load curtailment program, in which a group of households agreed to reduce the peak power consumption below the agreed load shedding limit. There are two types of results presented in the paper. Firstly, we show that residential customers reacted by lowering usage in critical peak hours by 6.30%, on average, and that 93.69% of the total consumption reduction is transferred to off-peak (earlier and later) hours on the same day. This decrease in usage is comparable with the effects of time of use (TOU) programs. Secondly, we identify that customers whose electricity usage was regularly below the load shedding limit also reduced their usage. We discuss such reactions to this non-binding restriction using a microeconomic approach and in the context of findings from behavioral science.