PEPP Seminar (March 17th, 2025): “Shock Avoidance: Experimental Evidence on High Bill Alerts and Energy Consumption” by Dr. Grant Jacobsen
2025/11/20
2025/3/17 (Mon.)
Speaker: Dr. Grant Jacobsen (Professor, Economics Program; School of Public Policy; Oregon State University)
Chair: Prof. Vuong
Time: 16:45~18:15
Title: Shock Avoidance: Experimental Evidence on High Bill Alerts and Energy Consumption
Format: Onsite 3A312
Abstract:
Utilities have invested billions of dollars in advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) but
proceeded slowly to deploy AMI-enabled programs that benefit consumers. High bill
alert (HBA) programs, which inform consumers of unusually high usage patterns, offer
an avenue for tapping AMI-enabled benefits. We evaluate an HBA program and find that
the program reduced mean electricity and natural gas consumption by about 0.5%. The
effects were largest at the top of the usage distribution, especially when normalized by
pre-program usage, indicating that households experienced fewer expenditure shocks.
Welfare estimates depend critically on assumptions related to the forgone value of the
conserved energy.
Joint paper: Grant D. Jacobsen and James I. Stewart*
*Jacobsen is at Oregon State University and Stewart is at the Cadmus Group.
