Assessing Electricity Customers Using Procurement Cost Metrics

Utility companies increasingly face the challenge of managing procurement costs while offering tariff structures that align with diverse and evolving customer behaviors-particularly those of prosumers.This paper introduces a data-driven framework to assess customer behavior under a spectrum of tariff designs, from flat to fully dynamic pricing, using empirical load data from a German utility company.The central contribution is a novel, interpretable market alignment metric that quantifies the relationship between individual consumption patterns and wholesale procurement costs.The metric enables customer-level profitability assessment and supports targeted strategies for acquisition and retention, including the design of signing bonuses.To evaluate the influence of tariff structures on procurement risk and margins, a behavioral model of prosumer demand response is developed, integrating discomfortbased utility functions.Simulations reveal that customers whose consumption patterns are inversely correlated with procurement cost fluctuations generate higher contribution margins under flat tariffs, while dynamic tariffs reduce margin variability but limit arbitrage potential.The proposed metric proves to be a robust and privacy-preserving predictor of normalized contribution margin, outperforming conventional load-based features in regression models.These findings offer actionable insights for utilities aiming to optimize their portfolio, manage procurement risk, and design customer-centric energy services.