Jacopo Torriti

• PhD
• Professor at University of Reading

https://www.edrc.ac.uk/publications/demand-flexibility-certificates/

Numerous occupant behavior (OB) models that simulate occupancy, activity and action at home have been developed to improve the accuracy and quality of energy demand estimations. Previous studies have revealed that the consideration of inter-occupant diversity improves the performance of OB models. However, existing models ignore spatial variation i...

Cities consume over 75% of natural resources, produce over 50% of global waste, and emit 60–80% of greenhouse gases. The scenario that by 2050 two thirds of the world population will live in cities, highlights how cities are still responsible for the growing consumption characterized by linear economic processes, with the production of various type...

Cities consume over 75% of natural resources, produce over 50% of global waste and emit 60-80% of greenhouse gases. The scenario that by 2050 two thirds of the world population will live in cities, highlights how cities are still responsible of the growing consumption characterized by linear economy processes, with the production of various types o...

Despite its ‘wordless’ and hidden characteristics, it is within the everyday tasks, routines, and rhythms that consumption takes place, from getting up every morning, having breakfast, going to work or school, having lunch, going home, having dinner, reading a book, surfing the Internet, watching TV, and probably doing similar things again and agai...

Restrictions on movement and the imposed social distancing and work-from-home rules due to the recent global pandemic have sparked an interest in understanding changes in the timing, duration and sequencing of daily activities. In this paper, we investigate how working from home during the various stages of COVID-19-induced lockdowns in the United...

Restrictions on movement and the imposed social distancing and work-from-home rules due to the recent global pandemic have sparked an interest in understanding changes in the timing, duration and sequencing of daily activities. In this paper, we investigate how working from home during the various stages of COVID-19-induced lockdowns in the United...

Several governments are opting to move from flat electricity tariffs to Time of Use pricing in an effort to curb peak electricity demand. However, despite the fact that numerous trial studies looking to quantify the effectiveness of pricing schemes have been carried out, these have produced mixed results, and in most cases, the observed temporal sh...

Decarbonisation plans largely rely on the electrification of energy-intensive sectors such as transport, which has raised both concerns and hopes about the implications for (peak) electricity demand. Particularly so when it comes to the potential impact that private EV charging might have on residential demand patterns. On the one hand, the more pe...

The ongoing decarbonisation of electricity generation prompts questions around ways to reduce expensive demand peaks and increasing flexibility. Some of those questions are in relation to the development of more cost-effective tariff structures that enable an equitable recovery of costs. Reforming the current tariff structure, however, involves res...

Despite its 'wordless' and hidden characteristics, it is within the everyday tasks, routines and rhythms that consumption takes place, from getting up every morning, having breakfast, going to work or school, having lunch, going home, having dinner, reading a book, surfing the internet, watching TV and probably doing similar things again and again....

In order to have the best possible chance of achieving ‘decent work’ and ‘climate action’ as laid forth in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, government and policy makers must pay close attention to current time-use patterns, as well as the way these might change in the near future. Here we contribute to the existing literature on time-use behav...

The introduction of Time of Use (ToU) tariffs may affect residential electricity consumers differently depending not only on their financial position but also time availability. The aim of this paper is to identify socio-demographic groups which may be financially advantaged or disadvantaged by the introduction of ToU tariffs. Assuming no behaviour...

In principle, Demand Side Response (DSR) is increasingly seen as a critical component of a low-carbon electricity network with renewables as main sources of generation. In practice, DSR has been slow to emerge in most electricity markets of developed and developing countries. One of the main reasons for the slow penetration of DSR is the difficulty...

Models simulating household energy demand based on different occupant and household types and their behavioral patterns have received increasing attention over the last years due the need to better understand fundamental characteristics that shape the demand side. Most of the models described in the literature are based on Time Use Survey data and...

Models simulating household energy demand based on different occupant and household types and their behavioral patterns have received increasing attention over the last years due the need to better understand fundamental characteristics that shape the demand side. Most of the models described in the literature are based on Time Use Survey data and...

Energy demand has significant impacts on carbon emissions and system costs and is triggered by what people do in their homes, at work and when they move around. Understanding the structure of energy demand involves analysis over individual behaviours related to energy, the structure of everyday life, how practices are sequenced throughout the day a...

During peak electricity demand periods, prices in wholesale markets can be up to nine times higher than during off-peak periods. This is because if a vast number of users is consuming electricity at the same time, power plants with higher greenhouse gas emissions and higher system costs are typically activated. In the UK, the residential sector is...

Models simulating household energy demand based on different occupant and household types and their behavioral patterns have received increasing attention over the last years due the need to better understand fundamental characteristics that shape the demand side. Most of the models described in the literature are based on Time Use Survey data and...

Models simulating household energy demand based on different occupant and household types and their behavioral patterns have received increasing attention over the last years due the need to better understand fundamental characteristics that shape the demand side. Most of the models described in the literature are based on Time Use Survey data and...

In current academic, policy and industry debates there is significant emphasis on the importance of enhancing the level of flexibility of electricity demand. Flexibility is considered critical in order to improve balancing with renewables, reduce costs of electricity generation and make the most of smart systems and battery storage. There remain qu...

BEIS issued a call for evidence on energy related products in the summer; this is the response from CREDS (Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions, a consortium of academics from UK universities who work with researchers, businesses & policy makers to support the transition to a low-carbon energy system.) Many of the questions in the call...

Understanding what constitutes peaks and identifying areas of effective load shifting intervention becomes vital to the balancing of demand and supply of electricity. Whilst there is information about the aggregate level of consumption of electricity, little is known about residential peak demand and what levels of flexibility might be available. S...

This book focuses on the economics of smart meters and is one of the first to present comprehensive evidence on the impacts, cost-benefits and risks associated with smart metering. Throughout this volume, Jacopo Torriti integrates his findings from institutional cost-benefit analyses and smart metering trials in a range of European countries with k...

The decarbonisation of electricity systems and the associated increase in variable generation sources requires an increase in power system flexibility. Demand side response (DSR) is widely viewed as a cost-effective source of flexibility, with considerable market potential. To date, the main DSR providers have been energy intensive firms. However,...

_Inaugural Professorial Lecture_ Video here: https://bit.ly/2N6EdG1 When we all consume electricity at the same time, energy suppliers have to activate dirty old power plants with excessive greenhouse gas emissions and high system costs. Shifting the timing of electricity demand is critical for balancing the grid when consumption is high and when...

Concerns about climate change, pollution and energy security have prompted policies aiming at replacing fossil fuels (in heating and cooling, and transportation)with electricity, presumably generated from renewable sources. Climate change itself is expected to increase the demand for cooling in buildings, which is generally met with electricity-pow...

Demand Side Response (DSR) consists of a set of programmes, policies and technologies that enable shifting energy demand in time with varying degrees of end user’s engagement. It is increasingly seen as the main tool for achieving flexible and responsive energy demand. The objective of this chapter is to move beyond existing approaches to better in...

Peaks in electricity demand generate significant negative environmental and economic impacts. As a result, recent policy and research attention has focused on the potential for temporal flexibility of demand, especially in the context of intermittent low-carbon generation. Much of this work emphasises the need to understand what makes up the peak a...

Introduction of Time-of-Use (ToU) tariffs have the potential to motivate consumers to flex their energy use and, by utilising their flexibility, support the reduction in peak electricity demand. In return , lower peak demand could also reduce the system costs due to the reduced need for peaking generation and network reinforcement. By their nature,...

Article Accepted Version Creative Commons: Attribution­Noncommercial­No Derivative Works 4.0 Curtis, M., Torriti, J. and Smith, S. T. (2018) A comparative analysis of building energy estimation methods in the context of demand response. Energy and Buildings, 174. pp. 13­25. Abstract: 13 A critical element of assessing a building's suitability for D...

Demand side response (DSR) is widely seen as the main intervention tool to address issues of peaks and troughs in electricity demand. Businesses can provide DSR through a variety of measures, such as using on-site generators or reducing their electricity consumption in response to external signals. To date, energy intensive firms have been the main...

A critical element of assessing a building's suitability for Demand Side Response (DSR) is understanding its turndown potential to ensure that DSR participation will be financially viable. While research has been undertaken on site level DSR estimation methods, there is currently no research that compares the outcomes of these methods. This paper c...

Electricity is essential for economic development and industrialisation processes. Balancing demand and supply is a recurrent problem in the Nigerian electricity market. The aim of this work is to assess the technical and economic potential of Demand Side Management (DSM) in Nigeria given different future levels of industrialisation. The paper plac...

The ways that we access, transport and use energy are changing dramatically in the face of user expectations, technological advancement and the policy imperatives of affordability, security and decarbonisation. The planning, design and operation of energy systems within buildings and cities is increasingly influenced by and influential on national...

This paper presents an exploratory analysis of microgeneration installer businesses in the UK during a period of intense change in the policy environment from 2010 to 2012. The research examines the influence of installer businesses on rates of uptake and standards of installation, and the interplay between business practices and the policy environ...

The creation of a Europe-wide electricity market combined with the increased intermittency of supply from renewable sources calls for an investigation into the risk of aggregate peak demand. This paper makes use of a risk model to assess differences in time-use data from residential end-users in five different European electricity markets. Drawing...

The creation of a Europe-wide electricity market combined with the increased intermittency of supply from renewable sources calls for an investigation into the risk of aggregate peak demand. This paper makes use of a risk model to assess differences in time-use data from residential end-users in five different European electricity markets. Drawing...

The time dependence of social practices at specific points of the day shapes the timing of energy demand. This paper aims to assess how dependent energy-related social practices in the household are in relation to the time of the day. It analyses the 2005 UK Office for National Statistics National Time Use Survey making use of statistically-derived...

Recent research and policy studies on the low-carbon future highlight the importance of flexible electricity demand. This might be problematic particularly for residential electricity demand, which is related to simultaneous consumers’ practices in the household. This paper analyses issues of simultaneity in residential electricity demand in Spain....

Peak residential electricity demand takes place when people conduct simultaneous activities at specific times of the day. Social practices generate patterns of demand and can help understand why, where, with whom and when energy services are used at peak time. The aim of this work is to make use of recent UK time use and locational data to better u...

Excessive peaks in electricity demand bring about significantly negative environmental and economic impacts. This is because if a vast number of users is consuming electricity at the same time, energy suppliers have to activate dirty old power plants with higher greenhouse gas emissions and higher system costs. Like other challenges, peak demand al...

Dynamic electricity pricing can produce efficiency gains in the electricity sector and help achieve energy policy goals such as increasing electric system reliability and supporting renewable energy deployment. Retail electric companies can offer dynamic pricing to residential electricity customers via smart meter-enabled tariffs that proxy the cos...

This paper investigates the value of a generic storage system within two GB market mechanisms and one ancillary service provision: the wholesale power market, the Balancing Mechanism and Firm Frequency Response (FFR). Three models are evaluated under perfect foresight and fixed horizon which is subsequently extended to explore the impact of a longe...

In 2006 the UK Government announced a move to zero-carbon homes by 2016. The demand posed a major challenge to policy-makers and construction professionals entailing a protracted process of policy design. The task of giving content to this target is used to explore the role of evidence in the policy process. Whereas much literature on policy and ev...

The perspective European Supergrid would consist of an integrated power system network, where electricity demands from one country could be met by generation from another country. This paper makes use of a bi-linear fixed-effects model to analyse the determinants for trading electricity across borders among 34 countries connected by the European Su...

Residential electricity demand in most European countries accounts for a major proportion of overall electricity consumption. The timing of residential electricity demand has significant impacts on carbon emissions and system costs. This paper reviews the data and methods used in time use studies in the context of residential electricity demand mod...

Nowadays the electricity consumption in the residential sector attracts policy and research efforts, in order to propose saving strategies and to attain a better balance between production and consumption, by integrating renewable energy production and proposing suitable demand side management methods. To achieve these objectives it is essential to...

Government initiatives in several developed and developing countries to roll-out smart meters call for research on the sustainability impacts of these devices. In principle smart meters bring about higher control over energy theft and lower consumption, but require a high level of engagement by end-users. An alternative consists of load controllers...

Policy makers are in broad agreement that demand response should play a major role in EU electricity systems and provide much needed future system flexibility. Yet, little demand response has been forthcoming in member states to date. This paper identifies some of the technical potential for demand response, based on empirical data from one UK dema...

Demand Side Response (DSR) has been slow to emerge in European electricity markets. This paper aims to both examine the reasons for low levels of DSR in Europe and reflect on factors that might affect the participation of DSR in capacity mechanisms. It relies on available evidence from the literature, secondary data on existing DSR programmes and e...

It is increasingly important to know about when energy is used in the home, at work and on the move. Issues of time and timing have not featured strongly in energy policy analysis and in modelling, much of which has focused on estimating and reducing total average annual demand per capita. If smarter ways of balancing supply and demand are to take...

In recent years both developed and developing countries have experienced an increasing number of government initiatives dedicated to reducing the administrative costs (AC) imposed on businesses by regulation. We use a bi-linear fixed-effects model to analyze the extent to which government initiatives to reduce AC through the Standard Cost Model (SC...

The recent roll-out of smart metering technologies in several developed countries has intensified research on the impacts of Time-of-Use (TOU) pricing on consumption. This paper analyses a TOU dataset from the Province of Trento in Northern Italy using a stochastic adjustment model. Findings highlight the non-steadiness of the relationship between...

The growing energy consumption in the residential sector represents about 30% of global demand. This calls for Demand Side Management solutions propelling change in behaviors of end consumers, with the aim to reduce overall consumption as well as shift it to periods in which demand is lower and where the cost of generating energy is lower. Demand S...

The premise of this volume is that business regulations are expected to grow in the near future as a consequence of the emergence of a "(world) risk society." Risks related to terrorism, climate change, and financial crises, for example, will penetrate all conditions of life. Increasingly, the decisions and actions of some bring about risks for man...

Demand response is believed by some to become a major contributor towards system balancing in future electricity networks. Shifting or reducing demand at critical moments can reduce the need for generation capacity, help with the integration of renewables, support more efficient system operation and thereby potentially lead to cost and carbon reduc...

The recent policy discussion in the UK on the economic case for demand response (DR) calls for a reflection on available evidence regarding its costs and benefits. Existing studies tend to consider the size of investments and returns of certain forms of DR in isolation and do not consider economic welfare effects. From review of existing studies, p...

17.1 The Current World Risk Society At the beginning of this book we set out the "why" and "what" questions associated with global risks and regulation. The book addresses these two ambitious questions in a number of different ways. 17.1.1 The "Why" of Business Risk Regulation The various contributions discussed the rationales justifying regulatory...

The orthodox approach for incentivizing Demand Side Participation (DSP) programs is that utility losses from capital, installation and planning costs should be recovered under financial incentive mechanisms which aim to ensure that utilities have the right incentives to implement DSP activities. The recent national smart metering roll-out in the UK...

This paper arises from a doctoral thesis comparing the impact of alternative installer business models on the rate at which microgeneration is taken up in homes and installation standards across the UK. The paper presents the results of the first large-scale academic survey of businesses certified to install residential microgeneration. The aim is...

The traditional economic approach for appraising the costs and benefits of construction project net present values involves the calculation of net returns for each investment option under different discount rates. An alternative approach consists of multiple-project discount rates based on risk modelling. The example of a portfolio of microgenerati...

Gaining public acceptance is one of the main issues with large-scale low-carbon projects such as hydropower development. It has been recommended by the World Commission on Dams that to gain public acceptance, public involvement is necessary in the decision-making process (WCD, 2000). As financially-significant actors in the planning and implementat...

One of the most common demand side management programs consists of time-of-use (TOU) tariffs, where consumers are charged differently depending on the time of the day when they make use of energy services. This paper assesses the impacts of TOU tariffs on a dataset of residential users from the Province of Trento in Northern Italy in terms of chang...

The prospect of a European Supergrid calls for research on aggregate electricity peak demand and Europe-wide Demand Side Management. No attempt has been made as yet to represent a time-related demand curve of residential electricity consumption at the European level. This article assesses how active occupancy levels of single-person households vary...

Providing homeowners with real-time feedback on their electricity consumption through a dedicated display device has been shown to reduce consumption by approximately 6–10 %. However, recent advances in smart grid technology have enabled larger sample sizes and more representative sample selection and recruitment methods for display trials. By anal...

This study presents the findings of applying a Discrete Demand Side Control (DDSC) approach to the space heating of two case study buildings. High and low tolerance scenarios are implemented on the space heating controller to assess the impact of DDSC upon buildings with different thermal capacitances, light-weight and heavy-weight construction. Sp...

In 2003, the European Commission (EC) started using Impact Assessment (IA) as the main empirical basis for its major policy proposals. The aim was to systematically assess ex ante the economic, social and environmental impacts of European Union (EU) policy proposals. In parallel, research proliferated in search for theoretical grounds for IAs and i...

Introduction: Demand response in domestic contexts may be differentiated into two modes of provision. First, ‘automatic’ load control involves the direct intervention by utilities to manipulate the performance of domestic appliances using heat or power, without the immediate involvement of domestic end-users. This is sometimes referred to as ‘dynam...

The idea behind evidence-based instruments for policy-making is to provide objective information regarding the costs, benefits and risks involved in legislative proposals. An example of these instruments is the integrated Impact Assessment system, which has been in place in EU policy-making since 2003. Impact Assessments are designed according to r...

The European Commission proposal on the liberalization of energy markets has been widely debated in policy, stakeholder and academic circles both for its content and the potential consequences for the structure of the EU gas and electricity markets. However, little has been said about the empirical evidence produced by the European Commission to su...

Over the last few years, load growth, increases in intermittent generation, declining technology costs and increasing recognition of the importance of customer behaviour in energy markets have brought about a change in the focus of Demand Response (DR) in Europe. The long standing programmes involving large industries, through interruptible tariffs...

There is a fine line between regulatory competition and cooperation across the Atlantic. Whilst U.S. and European Union (EU) increasingly collaborate on a range of specific regulatory areas in an effort to remove tariff barriers and thus facilitate trade flows of about 620 billion Euros per year, they also compete in order to improve their internal...

This chapter introduces one of the "better regulation" instruments, the Standard Cost Model (SCM), a method for measuring the administrative burdens imposed by regulation on businesses. The chapter examines the content and purposes of the SCM. It discusses some of the limits of the model and difficulties that public administrations may face in its...

Negli ultimi dieci anni l'Analisi di Impatto della Regolazione (AIR) è divenuta, nei Paesi sviluppati, "lo" strumento capace di fornire le basi empiriche per la predisposizione di atti normativi. Se il numero di casi di applicazione è considerevolmente aumentato, non si può dire lo stesso per la qualità delle analisi condotte. Anche in Italia, l'AI...

Regulators are faced with the challenge of foreseeing the effects of new technologies in the market, the environment and society. This implies not only a satisfactory knowledge of the scientific and technical characteristics of emerging technologies, but also a clear understanding of the socio-ethical concerns related to their future applications....

The EU proposal on liberalisation of the energy market has been widely debated in policy, stakeholder and academic circles both for its content and the potential consequences to the gas and electricity markets. However, little has been said about the empirical evidence produced by the European commission to support this legislative package. No rese...

The EU proposal on liberalisation of the energy markets has been widely debated in policy, stakeholder and academic circles both for its content and the potential consequences to the gas and electricity markets. However, little has been said about the empirical evidence produced by the European Commission to support this legislative package. Since...

Impact Assessments (IAs) were introduced at the EU level under the rhetorical facade of 'better regulation'. The actual aim was to improve not only the quality but also the reputation of EU regulation before stakeholders. However, evidence brought forward by a number of evaluations pointed out that IAs are yet to achieve acceptable quality standard...

Impact Assessments (IAs) were introduced at the EU level under the rhetorical facade of ‘better regulation’. The actual aim was to improve not only the quality but also the reputation of EU regulation before stakeholders. However, evidence brought forward by a number of evaluations pointed out that IAs are yet to achieve acceptable quality standard...