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Innovative User Experience Design and Customer Engagement Approaches for Residential Demand Response Programs

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Sustainability in Energy and Buildings

Part of the book series: Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies ((SIST,volume 163))

Abstract

The increasing share of intermittent sources is making it more difficult to guarantee a real-time balance between demand and supply on the electricity grid. To decrease the dependency from fossil fuel generation, a change in paradigm is required: from supply following demand whenever it occurs to demand following generation when it is available. Demand response (DR) programs enclose all practices that allow demand to take part in actively managing the grid. According to this perspective, the residential sector hides a huge still unexploited flexibility resource. Therefore, utilities and aggregators need to address weak customer engagement and a lack of regulation in order to employ innovative business models for harnessing residential DR programs potential. Within this paper, some of these challenges are investigated, with the view to improve the design of an appropriate engagement strategy and an incentive scheme to involve residential customers. The innovation consists in the development of a questionnaire as a tool to understand customers’ behavior and preferences, so as to consequently design customized solutions. Finally, a first-order approximation techno-economic analysis is conducted to contextualize the actual incentives for the single customer.

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Abbreviations

DCE:

Discrete choice experiment

DESWH:

Domestic electric storage water heater

DR:

Demand response

DUoS:

Distribution use of system

FFR:

Firm frequency response

STOR:

Short-term operating reserve

TNUoS:

Transmission network use of system

WTP:

Willingness to pay

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Energy, Politecnico di Milano, via Lambruschini 4, 20156, Milan, Italy

    Matteo Barsanti, Muhammad Mansoor, Giulia Realmonte & Francesco Causone

  2. Department of Architecture and Design, Politecnico di Torino, v.le Pier Andrea Mattioli 39, 10125, Turin, Italy

    Letizia Garbolino

  3. Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano, via Bonardi 3, 20133, Milan, Italy

    Rita Zeinoun

  4. Department of Energy, Politecnico di Torino, c.so Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129, Turin, Italy

    Valentina Fabi

Authors
  1. Matteo Barsanti
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  2. Letizia Garbolino
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  3. Muhammad Mansoor
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  4. Giulia Realmonte
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  5. Rita Zeinoun
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  6. Francesco Causone
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  7. Valentina Fabi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Matteo Barsanti .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Art and Design, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Cardiff, UK

    John Littlewood

  2. Bournemouth University, Poole, UK

    Robert J. Howlett

  3. Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy

    Alfonso Capozzoli

  4. University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia

    Lakhmi C. Jain

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Barsanti, M. et al. (2020). Innovative User Experience Design and Customer Engagement Approaches for Residential Demand Response Programs. In: Littlewood, J., Howlett, R., Capozzoli, A., Jain, L. (eds) Sustainability in Energy and Buildings. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, vol 163. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9868-2_52

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