Gamification of Residential Demand Response

Vicki KuoSection Manager, Customer Technology

Con EdisonOctober 24, 2015

1

Agenda

• Lets talk Games!

• Challenges for Con Edison residential demand response programs

• Gamification project concept

• Findings

• Q&A

2

Gaming Statistics

•Gaming is a $22.4 billion dollar industry.

• 44% of gamers are female. Most frequent female gamer is on average 43 years old.

• 35% of the people surveyed use their smartphone for gaming.

•Gamers play an average of 6.5 hours a week.

http://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/ESA-Essential-Facts-2015.pdf

Why do we like games?

• Studies have shown gaming to be an effective way to engage participants in a reward system.

•Research have shown gamers to have higher level of dopamine release in the brain than non-gamers.

•Dopamine is associated with happiness and euphoria.

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/brain/video-games#.UcmtcjvVB68

Hours

Load

(MW

)

3,1114,0015,0016,0017,0018,0019,001

10,00111,00112,001

4,0005,0006,0007,0008,0009,000

10,00011,00012,00012,836

25817

1,7042,0942,48270746833013423

Load Range (MW) Number of Hours

8,784 Hours - Leap Year

What is Demand Response?

5

23 hours (or 0.3% of the year) comprised the top

800 MW

Managing Summer Peak Demand

• Over 6 million room AC on Con Edison’s system

• Unit capacity 500 - 2000 W

• Represents ~2,500 MW of load

• ~20% of summer time load

7

Customer

View and controlremotely

via Internet

CoolNYC Program

CoolNYC Challenges

8

• Device connection rates• Event participation duration (opt-out time)• Cost effectiveness– Incentive payout– Mobility of room AC population

$0.10for sure

$100 with a 1 in 10,000 chance

Question• Do you want….

A B

Raffle Incentive Project

10

Gamification Project Concept

11

• Behavioral bias: Overweighting small probabilities – Large gamble is preferred to small but certain rewards

• Basic Idea: rather than pay each customer his/her contributed marginal benefit; pool total system benefit and raffle a few large rewards

• Benefits:– Can circumvent ‘small payment syndrome’

– Cost effective: can actually pay less on an average customer basis

– Repeated payments for performance will reinforce the bias

• Experimental Group– Lottery incentive– N = 200 households

• Control Group– Fixed rebate incentive of $25 for entire summer– N = 200 households

• Demand Response Events– Each event is 4 hours in duration (7 PM - 11 PM)– 5ºF temperature setpoint increase– 6 Events called over the summer 2014 (unseasonably cool)

12

The Experiment Design

13

The Incentive Mechanism: Lottery Tier Qualification

14

Mean Customer Participation Times

The difference in performance is most pronounced on the hottest day.

µe = mean event participation time for experimental groupµc = mean event participation time for control group

• The average marginal cost to the utility was– experimental group: $0.67 / hour of customer participation

– control group: $1.1 / hour of customer participation15

Mean Customer Participation Times

16

Dependency on Temperature

• Early winners stayed more engaged even with small prizes• Lowered incentive payout• Incentive design for (disruptive) load control

programs should exploit these behavioral biases

17

Findings

Questions?

18