Assessing Californians’ awareness of their daily electricity use patterns

The timing of electricity consumption is increasingly important for grid operations. In response, households are being encouraged to alter their daily usage patterns through demand response and time-varying pricing, although it is unknown if they are aware of these patterns. Here we introduce an energy literacy concept, 'load shape awareness', and apply it to a sample of California residents (n = 186) who provided their household’s hourly electricity data and completed an energy use questionnaire. Choosing from four prominent load shape designations, half of respondents (51%) correctly identified their dominant load shape before COVID-19 shelter-in-place (SIP) orders while only one-third (31%) did so during SIP orders. Those aware of their load shape were more likely to have chosen evening peak, the most frequent dominant shape in the electricity data. Our work provides proof of principle for the load shape awareness concept, which could prove useful in designing energy conservation interventions and helping consumers adapt to an evolving energy system.