Estimating Saving Electricity Potential for Peak Electricity Demand Reduction

In recent years, Japan has been facing difficulties in balancing electricity supply and demand. In response to the power crunch, research is being conducted on efforts to reduce electricity consumption during peak electricity demand times. An electricity company conducted a field experiment to reduce electricity demand in households. During peak electricity demand times, they distributed coupons to encourage people to go out. In the experiment to promote going out, the attempts to save electricity did not have enough effect because the coupons were distributed randomly. Therefore, this study proposes a method to perform occupancy detection in households using SVM and then estimate how much electricity can be reduced in each household (saving electricity potential). In this experiment, we estimated the saving electricity potential when using occupancy detection and when distributing coupons randomly and compared the results. The saving electricity potential was found to be higher when using occupancy detection compared to random distribution. By estimating the saving electricity potential, we confirmed the possibility of assessing the saving electricity effects of demand reduction strategies, such as distributing coupons.