Understanding Energy Equity through Smart Meter Data: Insights from Low-to-Moderate-Income Detroit Households

Understanding household energy use is a complicated problem with individual household use shaped by environmental, cultural, and economic factors. This paper investigates energy use and affordability for 57 mostly low-to-moderate income (LMI) homes in Detroit, MI using smart meter and some limited demographic data collected through surveys. We evaluate energy use through three equity-focused metrics: Energy Use Intensity (EUI), Energy Burden (EB), and the Energy Equity Gap (EEG), which measure efficiency of electrical usage, affordability, and energy limiting behavior through disparities in energy use and thermal comfort across income groups, respectively. Results show that lower income households in our sample face a median electric energy burden of 6.4%, which is considered unaffordable, while the highest income group in our sample has a median burden of 1.6%. The EEG reveals a 7°F cooling gap and a 7°F heating gap, highlighting disparities in energy use and thermal comfort across income groups. Our work demonstrates that these metrics, when used together, can help capture and reveal the many dimensions of energy poverty and insecurity facing LMI homes, which has implications for energy policy, energy rate design, and power system design and operation.