The rise of renewable energies, especially solar energy, poses new challenges for grid management. In our current article, Johannes Reichl, Rudolf Kapeller, Andrea Kollmann and Jed Cohen present promising results on how households can be motivated to consume energy in line with renewable energy production times.
Solar bonus: Households in our 1-year field test were notified one day in advance of times of high solar production via a smartphone app. For every kWh consumed during these times, they were offered a bonus of 10 cents/kWh. The result? Households increased their consumption by over 5% on average during the discounted times.
Day-specific findings: The study revealed weekday-specific patterns. Surprisingly, consumption on Thursdays increased by 11% during the rebate periods, while no significant response to the solar bonus was found on weekends.
Load shifting without increased consumption: An important observation was that although households shifted their consumption pattern, this did not lead to an overall daily increase. They consumed more during rebate periods and reduced it during non-rebate periods, so overall energy consumption remained constant.
For even more results and details: until 13 December 2023, our article is freely available at the following link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988323005261?dgcid=author
