Energy Prosumers and Behavioral Interventions

Abstract

Numerous field experiments have demonstrated that various behavioral interventions encourage households to decrease their energy use. However, with increasing numbers of energy prosumers who not only consume but also generate their own electricity and sell or store the surplus on the grid, it is unclear whether the same behavioral interventions are effective for this type of household. We conduct a country-wide randomized control trial with over 900 households equipped with smart meters, to test behavioral interventions that encourage energy prosumers both to reduce electricity use during critical peak hours and to reduce total electricity use. To implement the institutional differences underlying our hypothesis, we investigate two types of incentives—monetary information in the form of notifications about surge prices in the wholesale market and non-monetary informational incentives in the form of social comparisons—separately and together. We find that both types of interventions are effective in reducing average net electricity use and increasing average net electricity production during surge price periods. We find that the combination of critical peak price notifications and social comparison information exhibits the highest effectiveness in conservation behavior.