Increased concumer power in the Nordic electricity market

The project is a funded by the Swedish Energy Agency. It is a cooperation project with Mälardalen University (project leader Björn Karlsson) and its run during October 2010 to September 2012.

The de regulated energy market makes the roll of the customer very important and also complicated. The pricing model is supposed to make the customer to take decisions which decrease the power in the system and decrease the overall cost. There is however not much known how flexible the customers are and how the utilities react on active customers. In this project an investigation of the customer flexibility on different pricing models or mechanisms are investigated in an “Energilajv” with a large number of customers and utilities involved.

The other important area which is analyzed in the project is how small energy production will affect the energy system.  It is investigated how small scale production can be initiated and how the utilities handle this new production.

The project will deliver the following results:

-          Knowledge how new technical system will affect the load profiles

-          Knowledge how pricing models and incentives will influence the load profiles and give economical profits.

-          Knowledge how the decision makers react and act on a stronger demand of flexibility from the customer.

-          Knowledge how more informed customer will take decisions regarding their energy use.

-          Form a new general simulation tool which can be used by the utilities for estimating the impact of new incentives.

-          The goal of the project is to show methods for increasing the impact of the customer on the energy system.