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Assessing Household Electricity Consumers’ Willingness to Load Shift

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Sustainable Energy for Smart Cities (SESC 2021)

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Abstract

This paper focuses on the acceptance and motivations towards load shifting programs in the household sector. The research is based on a questionnaire addressing the Portuguese population and aiming to better understand the willingness to engage in load shifting, the main motivations for this, and the acceptance of automatic control systems to improve responsiveness to prices changes. The willingness to load shift electricity was then assumed as a proxy for the availability of the respondents to engage in a demand response (DR) program. The results show that most respondents would consider the engagement in DR and that the economic benefits are still the main driver. However, environmental concerns and even contribution towards reducing importations for the country emerge also as important motivations in particular for younger respondents. The study concludes also on the need to improve communication on DR programs and overcome the consumers’ inertia that still exists and prevent more effective participation in the electricity market.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ALGORITMI Research Center, University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal

    Paula Ferreira, Ana Rocha & Madalena Araújo

Authors
  1. Paula Ferreira
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  2. Ana Rocha
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  3. Madalena Araújo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paula Ferreira .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial Electronics, University of Minho, Guimaraes, Portugal

    Joao L. Afonso

  2. Department of Industrial Electronics, University of Minho, Guimaraes, Portugal

    Vitor Monteiro

  3. University of Minho, Guimaraes, Portugal

    José Gabriel Pinto

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© 2022 ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering

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Ferreira, P., Rocha, A., Araújo, M. (2022). Assessing Household Electricity Consumers’ Willingness to Load Shift. In: Afonso, J.L., Monteiro, V., Pinto, J.G. (eds) Sustainable Energy for Smart Cities. SESC 2021. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 425. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97027-7_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97027-7_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-97026-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-97027-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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