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ResPoNSe: modeling the wide variability of residential energy consumption.

Abstract

People living in houses consume a substantial portion of total electricity consumption— 37% of U.S. electricity end use (Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2008)—which produces greenhouse gases. U.S. households exhibit extreme variability in energy consumption from one house to another. The variation in energy consumption from differences in climate and building characteristics is well-studied; however, the effect of various appliance end use and especially the variation in the behaviors of the people that use them is less understood. Yet, this variability is critical to the effective design of technology, efficiency, and/or demand response programs in order to reduce this consumption, especially during periods of peak electricity consumption. While many techniques have been used to simulate actual residential energy consumption using models, most fail to take into account the behavioral component that contributes to the wide spectrum of residential energy consumption.

Towards this end, we have developed the Residential Power Network Simulation (ResPoNSe) to capture the spectrum—not average—of the electrical consumption of California households over the course of a hot summer day. ResPoNSe models the electricity consumption of a thousand households in order to test different demand response scenarios. Distributions of household characteristics, numbers and types of appliances per house, power consumption of the appliances, and the duration these appliances are used provide a more realistic variation of energy consumption. In turn, this simulation tool can provide a model of the spectrum of consumer response to different efficiency, marketing, or demand response programs.

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