Convenience before coins: Household responses to dual dynamic price signals and energy feedback in Sweden

Abstract

To enable and cope with an increase of intermittent electricity generation, the power industry and regulators are trying to incentivise users to use electricity at certain times through dynamic pricing and feedback. The effects of such interventions on patterns of electricity use have been extensively studied, yet little is known about how and why householders do or do not respond to such interventions. Using interviews and activity-based diaries, this study provides a qualitative exploration of how and why householders who are subject to a demand-based time-of-use distribution tariff, real-time retail pricing and real-time feedback, do or do not respond to such interventions in their daily lives. We find that the householders have adapted a range of existing practices and have started to engage in new ones that aim to reduce peak demand during peak hours, partly without the support of feedback. Drawing on theories of practice, we challenge common preconceptions about how and why price signals work by demonstrating how the size of the financial incentive that a price signal provides does not have that much influence on householders’ willingness to engage in demand response. We argue that price signals work by providing new meanings to practices that use electricity, that feedback can mediate these meanings, and that what matters for householders’ willingness to engage in demand response is that the changes they undertake do not cause them any inconvenience by limiting the temporal flexibility of other doings in their daily lives.