How much load flexibility can a euro buy? Findings from a choice experiment with companies in the German commerce and services sector

Demand-side load management is considered a cost-efficient solution for accommodating growing shares of intermittent renewable electricity production. Here, we use double-bounded dichotomous choice (DBDC) contingent valuation (CV) to estimate the effectiveness of a subsidy for companies to make available their HVAC and cooling systems for automated load management. Our sample includes 1131 companies in the German commerce and services sector with >10 employees of which we elicit the willingness to accept (WTA) automated load management in exchange for an annual subsidy payment. To our knowledge, our study is the first CV study on load management among companies.