A study of the potential impact of smart thermostats on residential energy efficiency and demand response in North America

Abstract

This thesis evaluates the potential impact of smart thermostats on the residential energy efficiency and demand response in North America. Smart thermostats are rapidly gaining popularity, and our estimations indicate that today there are more than nine million units already installed in North America. Electric utilities have recently started pilot programs known as Bring Your Own Thermostat (BYOT) through which they subsidize part of the smart thermostat that their customers install in their homes in exchange for taking command of the settings certain hours per day during for a few summer days. Currently, there are only about 50,000 homeowners enrolled in BYOT programs in the USA, but the expectation that smart thermostats can impact energy efficiency and change the residential demand response (DR) landscape is high. Using System Dynamics, this thesis has examined this potential, and the results show that the smart thermostats, in the business as usual case, can save about 60 TWh/year of electricity (or the continuous production of about fifteen 500MW coal plants - or Rosenfelds by 2025). If programs such as BYOT, where part of the thermostat is subsidized, were going to be popularized, this number can almost double. And additionally, this technology is creating an important potential in the residential demand response space, which is also studied in this thesis.