Consumer enrollment in residential demand response: Implications across diverse societies

The transition of a conventional energy system to a sustainable one requires the availability of flexible loads on the consumption side. Coupling several individual residential consumers can provide a high degree of flexibility, which can help the energy system during times of need. This paper aims to analyze the potential enrollment of residential consumers in demand response across different societies by using an agent-based model. The motivators determining consumer enrollment are personal satisfaction, the neighborhood effect, and the social effect. In this paper, three different societies, in which all consumers have one major motivator fixed, are considered. A Monte Carlo analysis was performed to address the randomness associated with assigning different neighborhoods, friends, and expected annual savings of consumers. The highest enrollment rate was observed in April, and the lowest between June and September for the societies where consumers had personal satisfaction and the social effect as their major motivators. The society in which consumers were mainly motivated by the neighborhood effect was highly dependent on the random assignment of the neighborhood, and the enrollment rate was independent of the electricity prices, which, in turn, resulted in complete enrollment or disenrollment of the neighborhood in the society.