When Bias Matters: An Economic Assessment of Demand Response Baselines for Residential Customers

Demand response (DR) has been known to play an important role in the electricity sector to balance supply and demand. To this end, the DR baseline is a key factor in a successful DR program since it influences the incentive allocation mechanism and customer participation. Previous studies have investigated baseline accuracy and bias for large, industrial and commercial customers. However, the analysis of baseline performance for residential customers has received less attention. In this paper, we analyze DR baselines for residential customers. Our analysis goes beyond accuracy and bias by understanding the impact of baselines on all stakeholders’ profit. Using our customer models, we successfully show how customer participation changes depending on the incentive actually received. We found that, in general, bias is more relevant than accuracy for determining which baseline provides the highest profit to stakeholders. Consequently, this result provides a valuable insight into designing effective DR incentive schemes.