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Changing the Cultural Behavior of Electricity Consumers for Demand Response Participation

Undergraduate #111
Discipline: Technology and Engineering
Subcategory: Electrical Engineering

Anna Paizley Ballenger - Clemson University
Co-Author(s): Pramod Herath and Ganesh Kumar Venayagamoorthy, Clemson University, Clemson, SC



Electricity consumers have different cultural behaviors. Some customers are concerned about paying less for electricity consumption, a few are environmentally conscience, and others careless. Demand response (DR) is an electricity usage and control program that allows electricity consumers to receive a compensation for reducing and regulating their usage. There is a group of customers that do not want to participate in such a program because of the perception that it would be complicated and take too much of their time to religious abide by these schedules. The problem with the above mentioned three types of customers is how you can effectively draw their participation in DR programs. In this study, visualization tools developed at the Real-Time Power and Intelligent Systems (RTPIS) Laboratory [1] are used to enhance a RTPIS Service Model created to manage DR for electric utilities and electricity customers [2]. The goals of these visualization tools is to draw more electricity consumers into DR program participation by changing their cultural behavior towards electricity usage. Furthermore, more informed visualization aids are provided at the customer end to display their level of participation in DR. The customer will be able to log into the online application to view their personalized dashboard. Customers will be able to see their individual power and energy consumption. To the average customer this will not mean much therefore a comparison to their neighbors’ participation is provided. The thought behind this is that awareness of neighborhood’s usage and DR participation will motivate less likely DR customers to reschedule and lower their consumption by DR participation. People who have no other motivation to participate in the program will this comparison to others and can be persuaded to participate. Customers with constant real-time awareness are likely to participate in DR more effectively. It will not just be a one way communication between the utility and the customers. The customer will have the freedom to be available or not to participate in DR at any given time. This selection by the customer will be sent to the service provider and allow for a dynamic change of the DR schedule. Our society is motivated, driven and changed by awareness. The RTPIS Lab DR visualization includes various awareness information, shows economic benefits earned and shows environment contributions made. Having these visual features will broader the reach to customers who careless of benefits economically, environmentally or both. This is a simple approach to change cultural behavior but could be effective over time. The goal of this is not to overwhelm people with information but to interpret their data so that they can be better informed and slowly change the culture of their electricity consumption. Future research involves adding renewable energy contributions to the dashboard to show the customers how much more they could be saving by using renewables.

Funder Acknowledgement(s): National Science Foundation grant IIP# 1312260 and the Duke Energy Distinguished Professorship Endowment Fund.

Faculty Advisor: G. Kumar Venayagamoorthy, gkumar@ieee.org

Role: I have designed and build the visualization tool.

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. DUE-1930047. Any opinions, findings, interpretations, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of its authors and do not represent the views of the AAAS Board of Directors, the Council of AAAS, AAAS’ membership or the National Science Foundation.

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