The management of the household demand for electricity: a review of 30 years of experiments around the world

Since the end of 1970's, experiments to test the impact of providing information, then of variable pricing, on the demand for electricity by households have developed considerably around the world. Initially undertaken in the USA and in the UK, where they analysed the impact of consumer information on overall demand, after the year 2000 these pilot efforts have been extended to most OECD member countries and aim too to reduce peak demand with appropriate price incentives. In recent years methodological improvements have been made in establishing the cause and effect relationship between these stimuli and the induced modification in consumption (internal validity). On top of methodological gains, the analysis of these experiments reveals some salient characteristics of the residential consumers' behaviour: the absence of any tangible and durable impact of solely using information on demand, the lasting incentive effect of variable pricing on reducing consumption at peak times, often creating a trend, as well as a strong heterogeneity of household reactions to these different stimuli. (authors)