Equity in Residential Electricity Pricing

Abstract Real-time pricing of electricity is theoretically more economically efficient than flat rate pricing. However, a switch from flat-rates to real-time rates means that many consumers will lose the cross-subsidy they are receiving under the flat rate, and may see an increase in their bills even if they have elastic demand. We use hourly load data from 1260 Commonwealth Edison residential customers on a standard flat rate electricity tariff from 2007 and 2008. We calculate which customers would have been better off and which customers would not under real time pricing with both elastic and inelastic demand and look at the general characteristics of these customers. We find that if customers do not respond to prices under RTP, then only 35% of customers save money, while the remainder loses. The greatest potential for savings is from reduction in capacity costs.

摘要 从理论上讲，电力实时定价比统一费率定价在经济上更有效率。然而，从统一费率转向实时费率意味着许多消费者将失去他们在统一费率下所获得的交叉补贴，并且即使他们有弹性需求，其电费账单也可能会增加。我们使用了2007年和2008年1260名联邦爱迪生公司居民用户在标准统一费率电价下的每小时用电负荷数据。我们计算了在弹性需求和非弹性需求两种情况下，哪些用户在实时定价下会受益，哪些用户不会受益，并研究了这些用户的一般特征。我们发现，如果用户在实时定价下对价格没有反应，那么只有35%的用户会省钱，其余的用户则会亏损。节约的最大潜力来自容量成本的降低。