The Econometrics of Dynamic Pricing in a Mid-Atlantic Experiment

The Baltimore Gas & Electric Company (BGE) undertook a dynamic pricing experiment to test customer price responsiveness to different dynamic pricing options. The pilot ran during the summers of 2008 and 2009 and was called the Smart Energy Pricing (SEP) Pilot. In 2008, it tested two types of dynamic pricing tariffs: critical peak pricing (CPP) and peak time rebate (PTR) tariffs. Some thousand customers who randomly placed on these tariffs and some of them were paired with one of two enabling technologies, a device known as the Energy Orb and a switch for cycling central air conditioners. The usage of a randomly chosen control group of customers was also monitored during the same time period. In 2009, the pilot only tested the PTR tariff. In this paper, we estimate a well-known demand model on the hourly consumption, pricing and weather data that was compiled in the SEP pilot. We derive substitution and daily price elasticities and predictive equations for estimating the magnitude of demand response under a variety of dynamic prices. We also test for the persistence of impacts across the two summers. We also report average peak demand reduction for each of the treatment cells in the SEP pilot and compare the findings with those reported from earlier pilots