Tools- of Changes

Applying Behavioral Insights to Unlock Residential Demand Flexibility: Guidebook for Practitioners

This guidebook was created to help civil servants, energy suppliers and energy operators improve the impacts of their demand-response initiatives targeted at households.

"One solution to improve grid stability is demand flexibility. It refers to the capability and motivation of consumers to shift electricity consumption across times of day."

The guide is organized around three 'behavioral challenges' that policymakers, energy suppliers and other energy actors must tackle to unlock residential demand flexibility.

1. Changing energy consumption habits
2. Encouraging enrolment and participation in demand-response programs
3. Increasing adoption of demand response technologies

It uses a System-Design-Communication (SDC) framework that looks at each of these at three levels.

1. System Level: Changing how energy market actors interact with each other.
2. Design Level: Changing the environment where consumers make choices (choice architecture)
3. Communication Level: Engaging households through content that is understandable, persuasive and appealing to a given target group.

The analysis is based on a systematic review of 124 academic articles and additional grey literature reports and articles. The final content was then reviewed by nine behavioral policy experts from the Users TCP Behavioural Insights Platform.