Conservation and Welfare Effects of Information in a Time-Of-Day Pricing Experiment (The)

A recurring concern in TOD pricing studies has been that short term experimental TOD rates may not stimulate as much conservation as would occur if TOD rates were implemented on a permanent basis. That is, how accurately do experimental TOD pricing results extend to nonexperimental settings? The present paper provides information relevant to this adjustment question. We examine a little analyzed component of the TOD pricing experiment conducted by the Southern California Edison (SCE) Company, wherein a subset of the TOD treatment households had a continuous-display, electricity use monitoring device installed mid- way through the experiment. The SCE experiment was one of 14 TOD pricing studies initiated by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Most analyses of TOD pricing have been based on DOE-initiated studies, but this experiment was the only such study to include the monitoring component.