Flexible electricity demand through dynamic pricing¹ is becoming more critical for net-balancing as the share of intermittent wind and solar electricity production increases. However, people are prone to habits and regularity, so this kind of dynamic pricing schemes may also impose a greater cost of reacting to price incentives. In a randomized field experiment we compare the household consumer welfare effects of reacting to dynamic electricity price incentives to those of reacting to time of use incentives. We utilized smart-metered hourly electricity consumption data to unobtrusively measure treatment effects. We found that a dynamic incentive of 1 DKK/kWh induced an average change in electricity consumption per household of 0.182 kWh during the 3-hour target period. The corresponding time of use incentive induced an average change in electricity consumption of 0.351 kWh. This implies that dynamic incentives reduce consumer surplus from reacting by half, compared to reacting to corresponding time of use incentives and therefore that households derive a substantial welfare benefit from the regularity and predictability provided by time of use pricing. This suggests that the tariff structure that optimally balances demand flexibility and the associated consumer welfare costs is likely a combination of time of use and dynamic pricing incentives.

通过动态定价实现灵活的电力需求¹随着间歇性风能和太阳能发电量的份额增加，对净平衡而言变得越来越重要。但是，人们容易养成习惯和规律性，因此这种动态的定价方案也可能会增加对价格激励措施做出反应的成本。在随机现场试验中，我们比较了对动态电价激励做出反应的家庭消费者福利效应与对使用时间激励做出反应的结果。我们利用智能计量的每小时用电量数据来轻松衡量治疗效果。我们发现，在3个小时的目标期内，每公斤1丹麦克朗的动态激励会导致每户平均用电量变化0.182千瓦时。相应的使用时间激励导致平均用电量变化0.351 kWh。这意味着与对相应的使用时间激励措施做出反应相比，动态激励措施将消费者剩余的反应减少了一半，因此，家庭可以从使用时间定价所提供的规律性和可预测性中获得大量的福利。这表明，最能平衡需求灵活性和相关消费者福利成本的关税结构可能是使用时间和动态定价激励的结合。