Lisette ten Boske
Project title: Assessment of the impact of consumer behavior on the demand response effect of real time pricing strategies in future electricity grids
In order to reach the climate goals, many new renewable-energy power plants will be constructed in the near future. However, grid operators fear that grid security and reliability could be threatened by a large share of renewables, because then supply is dependent on varying weather conditions. Smart grid and smart metering technology, combined with a real time pricing mechanism could potentially steer consumer electricity usage, leading to a better balance of renewable supply and demand. However, the success of energy management by demand response is strongly reliant on consumer participation. Therefore, different consumer types with varying values and attitudes towards price, the environment, comfort and risk are included in an agent-based model of an electricity network with a high share of renewable supply. Moreover, the pricing policies will be modeled under deep uncertainty to discover the effects of differing consumer behavior and fluctuating supply. The outcomes for different scenarios will be compared in order to provide a well-informed policy advise.
Committee: Martijn Warnier, Gerdien de Vries, Sjors Broersen
Summary
In the future, the energy supply will primarily consist of energy from renewables, which could threaten grid reliability. Besides a more fluctuating supply, energy demand is also expected to increase in the coming years. Demand-side management, and more specifically demand response, could be a way to make demand match supply better and limit the foreseen energy shortages. The implementation of a smart grid could potentially steer consumer electricity usage and allow for automated demand shifting. The aim is to improve the understanding of the effect of consumer heterogeneity on the participation in demand response. An agent-based model was constructed that represents the energy system as a copper plate model and incorporates the rule-based behavior of different consumer types. This model was used to answer the main research question: How can a simulation model be used to analyze the influence of consumer heterogeneity on the success of demand response enhancing policies in future electricity networks? The consumer types that were included are the green, the cost-conscious, the convenience-oriented and the indifferent energy consumer. Subsequently, five personal values were identified as important moderators for consumer participation, namely the values of price, environment, comfort, safety and social norm. Different interventions and combinations of interventions were compared based on the three model KPIs energy shortage, total electricity cost and required storage. Some main conclusions can be drawn from the analysis of the interventions. First of all, supply was the most important influence on energy shortages. For a constant supply, the results revealed that the simultaneous implementation of all policies was most effective to reduce shortages, followed by the policy combinations that included the cost comparison with a reduction. Depending on the shortage period characteristics, shortages could not always be solved completely by demand response, but a higher amount of demand shifters can improve the situation significantly. However, not all consumer types could be motivated to switch to a shifting contract, which means that the consumer population is an important influence on the effectiveness of policies. From this thesis it can be concluded that a simulation study is a successful way to create an inclusive model of the technical, economic and behavioral system components. The model was able to provide a system-level overview of the system dynamics and improved the understanding of interactions between interventions and consumers.
