Barriers to electricity load shift in companies: A survey-based exploration of the end-user perspective

As countries move toward larger shares of renewable energy and build fleets of electric vehicles, the slow diffusion of active electricity load management should concern energy policy makers and users alike. It leads to unnecessarily costly investments and/or jeopardizes reliability. Active load management can increase capacity factors of existing capacity, reduce the need for new capacity, and alleviate congestion and transmission constraints. In addition, it reduces price volatility, mitigates market power, and lowers electricity prices for end-users. This paper conceptually and empirically explores barriers to load shift in industry from an end-user perspective. Based on the taxonomy of barriers developed in the realm of barriers to energy efficiency, a questionnaire was developed which translates these barriers into 21 items in the context of load shift. Then, an online survey was carried out among companies located primarily in Southern Germany. The findings suggest that the most important barriers are risk of disruption of operations, impact on product quality, and uncertainty about cost savings. Of little concern are access to capital, lack of employee skills, and data security. The findings of statistical tests suggest that larger companies are more concerned about technical, financial and regulatory risk than smaller ones. Companies with a continuous production process report lower barrier scores than companies using batch or just-in-time production. A principal component analysis clusters the barriers, points to differences between barriers to load shift and barriers to energy efficiency, and offers guidance for future empirical studies.