Can’t Take the Heat? Randomized Field Experiments in Household Electricity Consumption

In residential electricity consumption, informational interventions such as in-home displays and social-comparisons have been shown to increase the salience of price changes{Jessoe, 2014 #3} (Jessoe and Rapson 2014) and impact an electricity system: the times when demand is at its highest and conservation is needed most (Joskow and Wolfram 2012). This paper examines the relative effectiveness of passive and active information interventions on appliance-level, household electricity consumption in two randomized field experiments over a two year period (2013-14). The first field experiment focuses on critical peak pricing (CPP) on summer days during peak evening hours where the price is higher and the second on off-peak, lower price nights. The contribution of our research is three fold. First, we examine the long-term effectiveness of passive and active information interventions on household energy consumption during critical peak pricing days. The passive informational interventions include (i) providing access to an online personal account to track electricity consumption in real time or (ii) sending a simple text message stating “A Pecan Street Project critical peak pricing event is taking place tomorrow 4PM to 7PM”. The active interventions include sending the passive text message plus (iii) an action such as “pre-cool your home” or “reduce your air conditioning usage” or “do not use your clothes dryer”, or (iv) “Your experimental electric rate will be $0.64 per kilowatt hour from 4 p.m. - 7 p.m.”