A Case Study of Socially-Accepted Potentials for the Use of End User Flexibility by Home Energy Management Systems

Christian Pfeiffer, Markus Puchegger, Claudia Maier, Ina V. Tomaschitz, Thomas P. Kremsner and Lukas Gnam
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Christian Pfeiffer: Forschung Burgenland GmbH, Campus 1, 7000 Eisenstadt, Austria
Markus Puchegger: Forschung Burgenland GmbH, Campus 1, 7000 Eisenstadt, Austria
Claudia Maier: Forschung Burgenland GmbH, Campus 1, 7000 Eisenstadt, Austria
Ina V. Tomaschitz: Forschung Burgenland GmbH, Campus 1, 7000 Eisenstadt, Austria
Thomas P. Kremsner: Forschung Burgenland GmbH, Campus 1, 7000 Eisenstadt, Austria
Lukas Gnam: Forschung Burgenland GmbH, Campus 1, 7000 Eisenstadt, Austria

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-19

Abstract: Due to the increase of volatile renewable energy resources, additional flexibility will be necessary in the electricity system in the future to ensure a technically and economically efficient network operation. Although home energy management systems hold potential for a supply of flexibility to the grid, private end users often neglect or even ignore recommendations regarding beneficial behavior. In this work, the social acceptance and requirements of a participatively developed home energy management system with focus on (i) system support optimization, (ii) self-consumption and self-sufficiency optimization, and (iii) additional comfort functions are determined. Subsequently, the socially-accepted flexibility potential of the home energy management system is estimated. Using methods of online household survey, cluster analysis, and energy-economic optimization, the socially-accepted techno-economic potential of households in a three-community cluster sample area is computed. Results show about a third of the participants accept the developed system. This yields a shiftable load of nearly 1.8 MW within the small sample area. Furthermore, the system yields the considerably larger monetary surplus on the supplier-side due to its focus on system support optimization. New electricity market opportunities are necessary to adequately reward a systemically useful load behavior of households.

Keywords: user acceptance; social acceptance; home energy management system; end user flexibility; flexibility potential (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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