SMART GRIDS NEED SMART CITIZENS

Customers must be aware of all social benefits obtained by playing an active role in a Smart Grid context. As such, emotional incentives should be considered, beyond financial ones, in order to motivate them and turn them into Smart Citizens. The project InovCity, in the Portuguese city of Evora, was launched by the main electricity Distribution System Operator (DSO), EDP Distribuicao (EDP Group) Portugal, in 2010, involving approximately 32,000 Customers. This project is assessing the changes of behaviors and consumption patterns when Customers are given information about their consumption and additional tools such as detailed access to their data and experiments with some consumption-related “gadgets”. Some of the results suggest that tariff-based incentives, on their own, may not be enough to change the Customer’s behavior in a sustainable and optimal way. For this purpose, some projects regarding Consumer engagement, like S3C, in which EDP Distribuicao is involved, are in place to assess how much elasticity with respect to load-shifting and consumption efficiency can be induced on Customers. This paper concludes by referring the main types of non-tariff incentives that can be implemented, as well as some results that have been reached so far in Portugal and some European pilot projects.