Effectiveness of Real Time Information Provision with Time of Use Pricing

Real time information feedback combined with various pricing schemes has been found to reduce residential energy consumption more than information and pricing policies alone. I examine the effect of information provision with bi-monthly, monthly, and real time pricing with in-home displays with a time-of-use pricing scheme on consumption over each month of the Irish Consumer Behavior Trial. I find that time-of-use pricing with real time pricing information reduce electricity usage up to 8.7 percent during peak times at the start of the trial but the effect decays over the first three months and after three months the trial group is indistinguishable from the control group. I do not find statistically significant improvements in energy savings when comparing monthly and bi-monthly billing treatments. These findings suggest that increasing billing reports to the monthly level or a web application providing real time information may be more cost effective than providing in-home displays