Incentivising consumers in smart grids to shift their electricity use

When consumers are successfully incentivised to shift their electricity consumption to times at which intermittent renewable energy sources are available, their consumption will become more sustainable. To get grip on what incentives work best, we made an agent-based model (ABM) of consumer behaviour in which electricity consumption choices are modelled. Based on this behaviour, household load profiles are generated and evaluated against a desired load profile. As a base for building this ABM we use the goal framing theory from the field of social psychology. This theory is, amongst others, meant to understand under which circumstances people behave environmentally friendly. Based on our preliminary results, and given the presumption that our model is sufficiently realistic, our most important conclusion is that people only change their behaviour when electricity prices differ significantly over the course of a day.