Date/Time
Date(s) - 04/12/2017
10:00 am - 11:00 am
Categories
Title: Is time-of-use electricity pricing effective?
Abstract: The intuition behind time-of-use (TOU) electricity pricing is to charge more when demand is high so that customers either reduce their peak consumption or shift some of their consumption to a different time of day. It might seem that impact analysis of TOU pricing is simple: we just compare the average consumption before and after its introduction. However, weather changes from year to year, affecting how much consumers use air conditioners, fans and heaters. In this talk, I will discuss two things: 1) a methodology for isolating the impact of TOU pricing in the presence of confounding factors such as weather, and 2) an application of our methodology to a local distribution company in Ontario, showing that TOU pricing led to a 2.6-percent drop in residential demand during summer peak periods.
Bio: Lukasz Golab is an Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo and a Canada Research Chair in Data Analytics for Sustainability. He holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science (with High Distinction) from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. in Computer Science (with Alumni Gold Medal) from the University of Waterloo. From 2006 till his return to Waterloo in 2011, he was a researcher at AT&T Labs. Lukasz’s research focuses on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of large-scale data management systems and developing new data-driven methodologies to solve problems in energy, sustainability and education.
