Earlier this year (April 2013) we pushed for Demand Side Management (DSM) in Sri Lanka to managing the burgeoning electricity demand in the country. Hence we were quite happy when the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lankan (PUCSL) recently released draft regulations for the institutional framework conducting DSM activities in the electricity sector. Today, at a consultative workshop on the draft regulations, we recommended the following:
- Coordinate the market research design that each of the 5 distribution licensees have to conduct prior to initiating DSM activities.
- Make use of behavioral economics and Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) for high impact since it is the most effective way to understand consumer behavior and “nudge” them to more energy-efficient and energy-conserving behavior. The impact could be even higher if Sri Lanka were to quickly scale up the use of smart meters.
- In the longer term, publicly release anonymized electricity usage data and spur decentralized innovation. The active app-development community could be leveraged to create apps that could provide consumers with actionable insights to reduce their energy usage and encourage more energy efficient behavior
LIRNEasia‘s submission to the request for comments is available HERE.
The presentation at today’s workshop is available HERE.
The accompanying news release is available here in English and Sinhala.
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Rohan Samarajiva
“LIRNEAsia, a policy research organization with a focus on infrastructure said randomized control trials (RCTs) could be used to gauge consumer behavior and needs.
Sriganesh Lokanathan senior research manager at LIRNEasia said Singapore’s power regulator had successfully used RCTs to assess pricing packages.
Sri Lanka has started to use time based pricing to push demand to off-peak periods, especially in the night for industries.”
From first news coverage: http://www.lankabusinessonline.com/news/sri-lanka-seeks-to-manage-power-demand/27754348