A Residential Demand Charge: Evidence from the Duke Power Time-of-Day Pricing Experiment

Demand charges account for one-third to one-half of industrial and commercial electricity bills, and yet they have been virtually ignored, both theoretically and practically, as a component of residential tariffs. Our objective here is twofold: (1) to model and test the effects of a time-of-use demand charge on residential consumer behavior and (2) to evaluate, theoretically and empirically, its influence on utility system peak. Among the pragmatic issues are the effects of sustained hot weather on household response and the effects of the charge on demand at time of system peak compared to billing demand.