Do Notifications Affect Households’ Willingness to Pay to Avoid Power Outages? Evidence from an Experimental Stated-Preference Survey in California

How much should electric utilities pay to maintain a reliable electricity system? This paper describes a stated-preference experiment that generates estimates for how advanced notification impacts household willingness-to-pay (WTP) to avoid outages. We find positive and statistically significant WTP to avoid power outages of $10/kWh, consistent with the expectation that outages are costly to the residential sector. We find notification reduces the WTP, but the effects are not statistically significant. There is limited evidence that these results vary by income and wealth levels. Back-up power ownership is positively correlated with respondents’ WTP to avoid outages