Project: Smart metering sustainable electricity consumption in Kalmar
In a collaborative effort with Kalmar Energi, this project aims to enhance our understanding of factors influencing people's electricity usage, as well as how these factors impact the distribution of electricity consumption throughout time.
Project information
Project manager
Giangiacomo Bravo
Other project members
Tobias König, Linnaeus University; Mikael Westling, Kalmar Energi
Participating organizations
Linnaeus University, Kalmar Energi
Financier
Kalmar municipality
Timetable
1 Jan 2024–31 Dec 2025
Subject
Statistics (Department of Economics and Statistics, School of Business and Economics)
Social studies (Department of Social Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences)
More about the project
Much debate has arisen in the last couple of years concerning electricity production and consumption in Sweden. This is linked, on the one hand, to increasing concerns about climate change and its consequences. On the other, increasing electricity prices represent a significant burden for Swedish households, especially less wealthy ones, and have resulted in extensive political debate and concerns over distributional fairness.
There are indications that price increases lead in aggregate to a reduction in electric usage, which is in line with what has been registered in southern Sweden in the last year. However, scientific evidence on whether, and to what extent, prices causally affect energy savings remains scarce.
This project aims to enhance our understanding of factors influencing people's electricity usage, as well as how these factors impact the distribution of electricity consumption throughout time. About two years ago, Kalmar Energi started to install smart meters remotely collecting real-time consumption data and to offer new contractual forms, such as hourly prices, hence creating exogenous variation among consumers.
Together with the changes in electricity prices that occurred in the same period, this setup represents a quasi-natural experiment providing a unique opportunity to understand how prices, economic arrangements (types of contracts, etc.), and technological innovation (smart meters) affect non-commercial consumers’ behavior. Our project will inform decision-makers and policymakers in designing policies that target consumers (or specific consumer groups) to more effectively encourage them to reduce their consumption, and/or shift towards consuming during off-peak times.
The project is part of the research in the research groups Computational Social Sciences and Linnaeus University Centre for Data Intensive Sciences and Applications.