Ontario Canada found that residential Time of Use (TOU) billing only shifted demand by 3% at the beginning of rollout, diminishing to 1% shifting in subsequent years. And "little evidence of conservation".
And "General service class [IE: commercial] customers show little evidence of load shifting behavior and are less responsive to the TOU prices than residential customers. However, general service class customers show some mixed evidence of conservation, although this is still marginal."
But they don't like to publish this info much. Smart meters were controversial (from it's giving me headaches, to this costs a lot of money for ? benefit over regular metering).
Electric utility pricing is regulated to be based on Return on Equity, so if they could increase their capital base through smart meter infra and cut the opex of meter readers, it economically benefits the utility, but not the consumer.
If it costs more to precisely meter than the savings for 99% of individuals, it was a bad (forced) program to upgrade to smart meter infra - it's not free. Could have invested the money into demand reduction (free LED bulbs, insulation loans etc.) or supply improvements.
Don't overspend on getting to 100% fairness.
Same reason why if you ask for a meter audit, they'll do nothing if it's +/- 2%, even though anything other than 0.000000000000000000000000% error is unfair.
Figure ES1, Pg 8:
https://www.brattle.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/7289_anal...
And "General service class [IE: commercial] customers show little evidence of load shifting behavior and are less responsive to the TOU prices than residential customers. However, general service class customers show some mixed evidence of conservation, although this is still marginal."
But they don't like to publish this info much. Smart meters were controversial (from it's giving me headaches, to this costs a lot of money for ? benefit over regular metering).
Electric utility pricing is regulated to be based on Return on Equity, so if they could increase their capital base through smart meter infra and cut the opex of meter readers, it economically benefits the utility, but not the consumer.