Trends in unit energy consumption: The performance of end-use models

This paper estimates models of electricity and gas consumption for individual households using the Miracle 4 to 6 data sets collected by San Diego Gas and Electricity Company. Two types of model were constructed: the first involves typical end-use models with consumption explained by appliance ownership, household demographic characteristics, house dimensions and household income; the second class uses these variables plus consumption data for the previous year. The latter models consistently fitted better, while the end-use variables afforded little explanatory power. The results thus suggest that simple end-use models are of little value, at least for short-run forecasting. Their use for long-run forecasting has yet to be evaluated.