Demand Side Management in the Services Sector: Empirical Study on Four European Countries

Abstract

Demand side management (DSM) is seen as promising, cost-effective measure to cope with high shares of intermittent renewable energy in the electricty grid system. As the regulatory framework in Europe is changing in favour of opening up new market opportunities for such measures, it raises the question which DSM potentials are effectively available. Besides the DSM potential in the industry sector, which is already addressed in many countries, the information on the DSM potentials and market acceptance in the services and residential sector is scarce. In order to properly evaluate such potentials and their impact, quality data is of utmost importance to understand the barriers and drivers for the future market development. Therefore, an empirical study regarding the DSM potential in the services sector is conducted to collect firsthand data from potential DSM users. In this paper we present the findings of the empirical study, describing the results for the tertiary sector of the following European countries: the UK, Poland, Italy and Switzerland. Our study includes the subsectors retail, wholesale trading, hotels, restaurants, office-type companies (privately held), public administration, public companies and services. The collected data is important and highly necessary as it remains currently unknown which facilities have already been included in DSM-markets and what willingness or readiness is dormant in services companies, to govern over specific facilities. The data-set and the results of the study were collected within the EU REFLEX project {[}The project REFLEX has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 691685 and the Swiss State Secretary for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI)] and will be used as basis for further modelling exercises, to analyse and evaluate the development towards a low-carbon energy system with focus on flexibility options in the EU.