Insights into End Users' Acceptance and Participation in Energy Flexibility Strategies

Ahead of the energy crisis, several countermeasures to reduce the energy demand require an active change in the end users' energy patterns. There are strategies known as demand response (DR) programs that have been tested in recent years, and they have showed us that users' behaviours can considerably reduce their effectiveness. This is due to a lack of sufficient knowledge, which leads to a lack of acceptance and participation. The key aim of this research is to detect which aspects influence acceptance of energy flexibility strategies the most. Through a series of tools, such as direct questionnaires, brief and user-friendly explanations, and analysis of variance, these aspects are studied by delving into specific topics such as smart home technologies, change in habits and patterns of energy use, and DR programs. In the literature, these topics have been studied separately, but they all contribute to the global acceptance: a comprehensive vision of the matter is the novelty of this work. The key findings are encouraging: 72% of the respondents demonstrated their willingness to enrol in a DR program. A reluctance to change habits was shown, in particular, among the age range 26-40, while women were more environmentally aware and more likely to participate in energy flexibility strategies. The modality of direct load control (which gives control to the utility company) is confirmed to be harder to be accepted (from 13 to 27% less acceptance depending on the category), with people who share a flat being the most likely to try it, and people who live with their parents being the less inclined ones. Acceptance increased when we provided plain language explanations, as seen in the case of smart home technologies: 97% of people who never tried them were declared to be willing to test smart technologies after a simple elucidation that was included in the questionnaire, showing that a right approach to the users led to a greater show of interest. This research highlights that the users' background and demographics characteristics (namely age, gender, educational level, home situation, home tenure, presence of children, and average income) should be taken into account when it comes to designing new energy flexibility strategies, since differences in the acceptance among groups have been found. The work also presents insights on the payback periods of legacy equipment in the EU energy context, demonstrating that a timely intervention can require half the time compared to that of the period prior to the crisis.