PROJECT FOCI

General research problem statement

More than half of the population in Slovakia lives in the cities and urban areas and it is growing. Along with urbanization, scarcity of natural resources, increasing environmental issues, conversion to mostly uncontrollable renewable resources, and associated high energy costs are putting momentous pressure on the governance and require citizens to rethink the way they behave in their natural environments and consume power and resources. The effort to improve energy efficiency and management on the demand side provides an alternative that allows individuals I) to satisfy their energy needs as well as II) to address modern energy consumption issues. The fact that the energy efficiency in Slovak residential sector improved only by mere 2.4% between 2000 - 2010  [source: ODYSSEE] that was at the same time the lowest improvement in the then EU-27, leaves the researchers with a major space for further work. In order to unlock the opportunity, the existence of a comprehensive framework as well as a seamless management system is critical for success.  While many energy-efficiency programs are already in place for both industry and households, the traditional electricity grid currently offers demand side management (DSM) only for industrial companies and commercial buildings.

Information barriers and the lack of empirical and detailed understanding of residential consumer behavior has impeded wider emergence of DSM solutions and technologies in the residential sector. It is paramount to develop methods and models that will capture preferences and flexibility of customers together with their value in order to inform compensation mechanisms that:

I) incentivize participation in the DSM programs,

II) save costs to the system operators,

III) improve reliability of service.

Understanding of these attributes is non-trivial due to the large-scale and variability of consumer profiles and different architecture of associated infrastructure. With efficient data-driven tools in place, the short-term consumer flexibility can play a key role in sustainable and reliable power supply of the future as well as in reduction of future generation cost, distribution and system cost, electricity prices, CO2 emissions and power consumption as such. 

Approach

If DSM is to provide innovative ways of balancing supply and demand also in the residential sector, any intervention on load shifting side needs to be informed not only by load profiles of the customers, but also by flexibility of consumers inferred from patterns of their daily activities. This approach calls not only for a detailed knowledge of when and how people consume energy,  but  also for better understanding of geographic differences and the  variation that can be observed in peoples' practices during a day, a week or a month.

Our work will focus on analysis of behavioral aspects of DSM programs under various scenarios as well as different architectures. As a result, we will provide a comprehensive case study along with simulations and numerical analysis based on consumer data on ZIP code level. We will build our work around core philosophy that statistical models of physical phenomena + (novel system and control tools) = societal advancement.

Scope

In our assessment we will take into consideration demographic data (renting vs. ownership, age, income, marital status, etc.) to demonstrate spatiotemporal consumption patterns in different neighborhoods and city districts in Bratislava region and inform a model that will be used to analyze DSM strategies in the city and its suburbs. The pivotal goal is to shed light not only on what predicts consumers’ behavior and what predicts changes in behavior of individuals across time and place – but also when, where, how, why and to whose benefit these effects occur. Special focus is put on temporal availability and geographic distribution of flexible loads.

Using rich high-resolution consumer data we will create consumer typologies and demand pools and divide them into tiers – e.g. running, flexible, idle for experimental purposes. Leveraging important details we will segment the demand by ZIP code and alternatively by customer momentarily flexibility.

 To date, most empirical research on residential energy consumption has involved non-randomised and/or non-experimental studies, which are inadequate for testing causal relationships and determining the direct effects of predictor on outcome variables, including the precise causal impact of various interventions on changes in behavior. In order to gain insights and untangle complexities of the problem at hand, we plan to conduct rigorous scientific research —namely run randomised controlled trials on a significant sample of customers, collect more objective measures of actual behaviour, and analyze longitudinal data collected over time.

What we want to show

• which variables are most important;
• how variables interact with each other;
• how variables relate to the target variable (i.e. electricity consumption)

...and provide answers to key questions

• will societal cost of electricity decrease as a result of DSM programs?
• will the cost incurred by individuals (participants) and utilities decrease as a result of DSM programs?
• will the DSM have a long-term impact on utility rates?

The Goal

The goal is to further use the models and methods developed in the research for the purpose of education, urban and energy planning. Additional and perhaps even more important application of the project outcomes would be their use as a resource for public policy-making purposes.  An example of this would be enhanced consumer focused strategies and architecture of public policy interventions incentivizing residential energy conservation.

Example of outcome (dynamic model of consumption, savings and availability of flexible customers):