IMPROSUME - The Impact of Prosumers in a Smart Grid based Energy Market
Type
applied research project
Start Date
01 October 2010
End Date
30 June 2013
Status
completed
Keywords
business models
smart grids
prosumers
Description
This is a joint research project with partners from NCE Halden (Norway), Aarhus School of Business (Denmark) and others.

"Prosumer" is an emerging concept in the power market that applies to consumers of energy that can also be producers. In a SmartGrid a prosumer can be a new and active participant in balancing the electricity system. A prosumer can be characterized by distributed generation technologies, energy storing equipment, smart meters and equipment to monitor, control and operate. The SmartGrid creates the basis for intelligent integration of user-actions in securing a continuing high supply security while integrating more fluctuating renewable energy into the electricity supply system. An important requirement is acceptance and active adoption of the new possibility by the prosumer. This project focuses on prosumers and their role and influence on the future energy market, and the role's impact on established structures will be highlighted.

The University of St. Gallen is the leader of workpackge 2 (WP2), "Preferences for Prosumer Business Models".

Questions of how to develop the market are crucial for the prosumer concept. An aspect of paramount importance in this regard is that business models for prosumers meet stakeholder expectations. Thus, an investigation of stakeholder preferences for different prosumer business model configurations is of interest. As a first step WP2 intends to conceptualize prosumer business models on base of an in-depth literature and industry review. Within a second step WP2 intends to measure preferences of different stakeholders for those business models in order to derive implications for managerial business model design and supportive energy policy. The geographical focus is on Switzerland, but comparisons with other European countries (e.g. Norway and Denmark) could be incorporated as well. The work package as a whole builds on consistent body of theory (business models) and uses the same state-of-the-art methodology for data collection and analysis (interviews and online Adaptive Choice-based Conjoint experiments). However, WP2 is divided into several sub-projects, each of which will be subject of a report:

- conceptual prosumer business model configurations (April 2011)
- stakeholders business model preferences I (October 2011)
- stakeholders business model preferences II (April 2012)
- implications for energy policies (September 2012)

Within ERA-Net the Swiss contribution of this project is funded by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy.
Leader contributor(s)
Member contributor(s)
Kuenzel, Karoline
Partner(s)
NCE Halden (Norway), Aarhus School of Business (Denmark), and others
Funder(s)
Topic(s)
business models
smart grids
prosumers
Method(s)
qualitative and quantitative empirical methods
case studies
conjoint experiments
Range
HSG Internal
Range (De)
HSG Intern
Division(s)
Eprints ID
70172

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  • Publication
    Customer value of smart grids: Empirical evidence from a cross-European-country study and implications for business models
    ( 2011-06-22)
    Loock, Moritz
    ;
    Curtius, Hans
    An aspect of paramount importance in this regard is that smart grid business models meet consumer expectations. Especially along with increasing market liberalization energy firms need to understand and react upon consumer preferences. Thus, an investigation of consumer preferences and conclusions of how those might affect business models in the field is of interest. However, we still only poorly understand consumer preferences in the field of smart grids and how those preferences differ across different consumer typologies and different countries. Thus we ask, what are customer preferences in the field of smart grids and how do customer preferences differ between different customer types and across countries? From earlier research we learned that not only technology but business models are relevant for the establishment and further diffusion of clean technology in general (e.g. Boehnke, 2007; DISTRES, 2009; Frantzis et al., 2008; Loock, 2010a; Schoettl & Lehmann-Ortega, 2010; Wüstenhagen & Boehnke, 2008). However, when it comes to smart grids we have only found limited research that indicates which business model configurations exist and which of these different consumer types would prefer (Forsa, 2010; Kaufmann, 2010; Kranz, 2010). For a thorough evaluation of the benefit of certain business model configuration a deep understanding of customer preferences is a precondition. A suitable analytic frame for such investigation is the concept of customer value, which exactly discusses the interface between customer preferences and a firms offering, hence it's business model. In particular customer value has been identified as an important object of a firm's approach of economic value creating (Belz & Bieger, 2006; Parasuraman, 1997; Slater, 1997; Woodruff, 1997). "Customer value is a customer's perceived preference for and evaluation of those product attributes, attribute performances, and consequences arising from use that facilitate (or block) achieving the customer's goals and purposes in use situations" (Woodruff, 1997: 142). We conducted an online consumer survey on smart grids for four European countries (Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Lichtenstein). After recruitment of cunsumers by online and print media, by leaflets and by inserts to the electricity bill of a regional energy provider we got a sample of 837 probands. A hierarchical clustering based on Ward's method on SPSS was used to identify three clusters. The analysis is based on questions relating the advantages and reservations of using smart meters. We characterized each customer type according to socio-economic aspects. In line with previous research (Forsa 2010) we detected a high number (around 2/3) of customers who do not have any prior knowledge and have never heard about smart meters. Different results, however, were obtained from Germany where only about 1/3 of respondents stated to have never heard about smart meters. Another interesting outcome is the fact, that the expected advantages of the usage of smart meters greatly outweigh the concerns by almost all respondents. In line with this wie detected a high willingness to pay for a smart meter by one third of the consumers. With help of a cluster analysis we furthermore assigned customers to three clusters, each with customers that have different amounts of concerns and expect different amounts of advantages. Surprising differences about their willingness to pay for smart meters and their attitude to the consumption of green energy could be established. Those results have implications for further research on social acceptance of smart grids and managerial business model design for smart grid products and services.
    Type: presentation
    URI: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/93935
  • Publication
    Customer value of smart metering : Explorative evidence from a choice-based conjoint study in Switzerland
    (Elsevier, 2013-02)
    Kaufmann, Simon
    ;
    Kuenzel, Karoline
    ;
    Loock, Moritz
    Implementing smart metering is an important field for energy policy to successfully meet energy efficiency targets. From an integrated social acceptance and customerperceived value theory perspective we model the importance of customer value of smart metering in this regard. We further shape the model on a choice-based conjoint experiment with Swiss private electricity customers. The study finds that overall customers perceive a positive value from smart metering and are willing to pay for it. Further, based on a cluster analysis of customers' value perceptions, we identify four customer segments, each with a distinct value perception profile for smart metering. We find that energy policy and management should integrate a solid understanding of customer value for smart metering in their initiatives and consider different smart metering market segments within their measures.
    Type: journal article
    Journal: Energy Policy
    Volume: 53
    Issue: 2
    DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2012.10.072
    URI: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/89678
    Scopus© Citations 85
  • Publication
    Generic customer segments and business models for smart grids : Empirical evidence from a cross-European country study
    (Springer-Verlag, 2012-08)
    Curtius, Hans
    ;
    Kuenzel, Karoline
    ;
    Loock, Moritz
    The implementation of smart grids - one of the urgent goals to meet international policy expectations for energy efficiency and CO2 reduction targets - is not a technological issue alone, as it also requires social acceptance by various stakeholders (Wolsink 2011). It is of particular interest that smart grid products and services provide value to the customer. On the one hand, customer value of smart grid technologies is crucial to customer acceptance. On the other hand, as customer value is a key driver for economic value creation and competitive advantage (DeSarbo et al. 2001; Porter 1985), it is also important for companies and investors and thus will affect market acceptance of smart grid technologies. In the literature, business models address the bridge between customers and company needs and serve as mediators between technology and economic success by providing a value proposition to customers and a revenue model for companies (Chesbrough and Rosenbloom 2002). However, we know from the literature that a one-size-fits-all business model may not lead to the best results as it might fail to address heterogeneous customer value perceptions (DeSarbo et al. 2001; Morris et al. 2005; Ruiz et al. 2007; Wiedmann et al. 2009). Thus, different business models providing different customer value propositions need to be developed to fit the different market segments in an optimal way. On the basis of a cross-European country study, we explore three generic B2C customer segments for smart grid products and services based on different value perceptions (Supporters, Ambiguous and Skeptics). Based on the segmentation we conceptually derive four generic business model designs with different customer value propositions best suited for approaching those segments (Saver, Smart+, Trader, Smart Camouflage). Implications for energy policy, research and smart grid management are derived from the findings.
    Type: journal article
    Journal: der markt: International Journal of Marketing
    Volume: 51
    Issue: 2-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s12642-012-0076-0
    URI: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/91242