Abstract: Wholesale prices for electricity vary significantly due to high fluctuations and low elasticity in short-run demand. End-use customers have typically paid flat retail rates for their electricity consumption, and time-varying prices have been proposed to help reduce peak consumption and lower the overall cost of servicing demand. Unfortunately, the general practice is an opt-in system: a default rule in favor of time-varying prices would be far better. A behaviorally informed analysis also shows that when transaction costs and decision biases are taken into account, the most cost-reflective policies are not necessarily the most efficient. On reasonable assumptions, real-time prices can result in less peak conservation of manually controlled devices than time-of-use or critical-peak prices. For that reason, the trade-offs between engaging automated and manually controlled loads must be carefully considered in time-varying rate design. The rate type and accompanying program details should be designed with the behavioral biases of consumers in mind, while minimizing price distortions for automated devices.
The John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business
Harvard Law School
The John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business
Harvard Law School