Toward a sustainable modern electricity grid: The effects of smart metering and program investments on demand-side management performance in the US electricity sector 2009-2012
基于2009-2012年美国87家电力公司的面板数据，研究了智能计量技术和需求侧管理项目投资对能效和负荷管理的影响，发现自动抄表和高级计量基础设施等设备以及项目成本对能效有正向作用，但对负荷管理效果不显著。
Building a sustainable modern electricity sector is a key part of the United Nations' 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Smart meters are expected to contribute to the achievement of this goal by providing new demand-side management opportunities for utilities. Attempting to address existing gaps in the extant literature, this paper examines the effects of metering technologies and demand-side management program investments using panel data from 87 American electricity utilities for the period 2009-2012. Our model provides strong explanatory power with respect to energy efficiency, and shows that automated meter reading (AMR) devices, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) devices, direct program costs, and incentive costs all have a positive influence on energy efficiency effects. In contrast, the results for load management are largely insignificant, with the exception of incentive costs that has a small, but significant, negative impact on peak load reductions. We discuss the implications and potential research directions arising from these findings, in particular, the need to consider interactions between different demand-side programs and the influence of different types of information technologies that are emerging as part of the smart grid.