Verena Tiefenbeck

Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nürnberg | FAU

Through a deterministic techno-economic analysis based on high-resolution real-world demand data from 3,594 households, we analyse how the configuration of a solar energy community (EC) impacts its economic and technical performance. We find that prosumer ratio and PV capacity, but not community size, affect prosumer profitability and EC self-suffi...

Faced with the challenge of increasing the share of renewable energy generation, many countries have put local peer-to-peer (P2P) energy markets on their political agenda for driving the adoption of renewable energy. This is the first study to examine this concept empirically in a real-world P2P market, in which renewable energy was auctioned among...

In order to induce the shift in consumer behavior necessary for the mitigation of diet-related diseases, front-of-package labels (FoPL) such as the Nutri-Score that support consumers in their efforts to identify nutritionally valuable products during grocery shopping have been found to be effective; however, they remain non-compulsory in most regio...

Algorithmic advice has been shown to outperform human reasoning in various domains. However, prior research suggests that humans might be reluctant to accept it and proposed multiple avenues to increase the acceptance. To structure these approaches and potentially shed light on inconclusive results of prior studies, we propose a novel perspective o...

Peer-to-peer (P2P) exchange of renewable energy is an attractive option to empower citizens to actively participate in the energy transition. Whereas previous research has assessed P2P communities primarily from a techno-economic perspective, little is yet known about prosumer preferences for solar power trading. Importantly, impacts of community m...

The transport sector is responsible for 25% of global CO 2 emissions. To reduce emissions in the EU, a shift from the currently 745,000 operating public buses to electric buses (EBs) is expected in the coming years. Large-scale deployments of EBs and the electrification of bus depots will have a considerable impact on the local electric grid, poten...

Digital nudges offer a promising avenue to promote individual welfare by supporting individuals in their daily decision-making. However, most existing applications merely adapt analog nudges to the digital world, rather than leveraging the unique possibilities that digital environments offer. At the same time, recent discussions raise ethical objec...

Peer-to-peer (P2P) exchange of renewable energy is an attractive option to engage and empower citizens to actively participate in the energy transition. Whereas previous research has provided techno-economic models and technological solutions to enable P2P energy trading, little is yet known about citizen preferences for solar power trading. Import...

Artificial intelligence (AI) offers promising tools to support the job-seeking process by providing automatic and user-centered job recommendations. However, job seekers often hesitate to trust AI-based recommendations in this context given the far-reaching consequences of the importance of the decision for a job on their future career and life. Th...

More and more organizations are compensating the greenhouse gas emissions caused by their products and services through carbon offset programs. From the customers’ perspective, the mitigation of negative externalities associated with their demand may increase the utility derived from the (then guilt-free) consumption. In particular in settings wher...

Peer-to-peer (P2P) energy markets are a widely discussed approach toward a sustainable energy supply that allows private owners of distributed energy resources (e.g., solar panels) and consuming households to trade energy directly without intermediaries. P2P energy markets are expected to contribute to a green, local, and fair energy system in the...

Peer-to-peer (P2P) energy markets are gaining interest in the energy sector as a means to increase the share of decentralised energy resources (DER), thus fostering a clean, resilient and decentralised supply of energy. Various reports have touted P2P energy markets as ideal use case for blockchain-technology, as it offers advantages such as fault-...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Hotel guests changed their resource-use behaviour when they received feedback on their consumption in real time, even though they did not know that they were part of a study and had no financial incentives. Behavioural interventions provided by digital technologies are a scalable and cost-effective policy instrument for fostering resource conservat...

Abstract Due to environmental and resiliency benefits, distributed energy resources (DER) are a potential solution for meeting future electricity demand, but their integration into centralized power markets on the large scale is challenging. Many practitioners argue that blockchain technology can create new market structures for DER like local peer...

Local energy markets (LEMs) allow localized energy trading between actors within a community. Academic research has actively investigated the LEM concept to support the European energy transition since the turn of the millennium. However, the actual implementation of LEMs in real-life projects has only begun in 2016. We provide a market engineering...

Prosumers in many regions are facing reduced feed-in tariffs and currently have no possibility to influence the level of remuneration for the locally produced solar energy. Peer-to-peer communities may offer an alternative to the feed-in tariff model by enabling prosumers to directly sell their solar energy to local consumers (possibly at a rate th...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Self-consumption is an increasingly economically attractive solution for electricity generated by distributed energy resources, which also reduces transmission losses, power line overload and grid instability. Yet, at single-building scale, production and demand do often not coincide. Microgrids are proposed as a means to trade surplus energy produ...

Feedback interventions have proven to be effective at promoting energy conservation behaviour, and digital technologies have the potential to make interventions more powerful and scalable. In particular, real-time feedback on a specific, energy-intensive activity may induce considerable behaviour change and savings. Yet, the majority of feedback st...

Self-consumption is an increasingly economically attractive solution for electricity generated by distributed energy resources, which also reduces transmission losses, power line overload and grid instability. Yet, at single-building scale, production and demand do often not coincide. Microgrids are proposed as a means to trade surplus energy produ...

Traditionally, Information Systems (IS) research focuses on the use and development of IS within and between organizations. This lens dates back to when IS use was mostly confined to professional contexts. Over the last decades, the application of IS has experienced a strong expansion to private contexts, where a large share of IS investments, incr...

Hightlights: - Techno-economic model analyzing profitability of PV-battery systems. - Heterogeneity analysis based on 4190 real-world load profiles. - Predictor for optimal PV-battery system configuration for individual households. - Large variance in profitability, even for households with comparable annual demand. - Good prediction accuracy with...

Inattention and imperfect information bias behavior toward the salient and immediately visible. This distortion creates costs for individuals, the organizations in which they work, and society at large. We show that an effective way to overcome this bias is by making the implications of one’s behavior salient in real time, while individuals can dir...

Editorial of the 6th D-A-CH+ Conference on Energy Informatics, Lugano, Switzerland, October 5-6 2017

Information system (IS) have not only become indispensable in professional contexts, but can also serve as a platform for data-based interventions targeting issues for humanity. Providing individuals with concrete feedback on their current behavior has been shown to foster sustainable behavior. So far, research on the real-world impact and underlyi...

Smart technologies in the energy sector could benefit from social science research — and vice versa.

Decentralized photovoltaic (PV) battery systems have recently received great attention from consumers around the world. PV battery systems allow consumers to reduce their dependence on the local electricity supplier at lower or equivalent costs. However, the profitability of PV battery systems depends greatly on the local meteorological conditions...

Eco-Driving Feedback Informationssysteme haben das Potenzial, auf sehr rasche und effiziente Weise zur Reduktion von Spritverbrauch und CO2 im Strassentransportwesen beizutragen. Vor allem neuere vernetzte Fahrzeuge bieten durch die zunehmende Digitalisierung der Cockpits viel Freiraum zur Gestaltung und Untersuchung von Eco-Driving Feedback. Neben...

Keywords: Green IS, feedback, voluntary carbon offsetting, behavioral change, field experiment Modern life all across the globe depends on energy – whether in business or in private context. The increasing demand drives well-known problems on different levels (e.g., scarcity of natural resources, pollution of the environment, energy security). Th...

In the domain of energy consumption, good intentions do not necessarily imply sustainable behavior. Information Systems (IS) can promote energy efficiency by providing users with information about their behavior. While IS research has developed several models explaining adoption and usage of various technologies in the organizational context, less...

Aside from regulatory measures and price-based instruments, many governments use voluntary energy efficiency measures as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, both in the commercial and residential sector. In the domain of water heating-the second largest domestic energy end use-flow restrictors in showers are being contemplated as a dual-pur...

In order to develop effective technology-or behavior-based energy conservation measures, it is necessary to quantify the impact of consumer behavior and to understand what drives the variance in individuals' energy consumption. While sensors and communication technologies are becoming more and more ubiquitous, surprisingly little data is still avai...

Participants of research studies may exhibit altered behaviour resulting from awareness of being a part of an experimental study. Although this so-called Hawthorne effect has led to increased scrutiny in social science research, little is still known about the magnitude and persistence of that phenomenon. The findings of several recent field studie...

Various models in Information Systems (IS) research seek to understand why individuals embrace or resist the adoption or use of a technology. Different models analyze the factors shaping user intentions at different stages of technology adoption and use. Yet, less is known how the factors shaping adoption intention subsequently evolve into continuo...

In the promotion of sustainable consumer behaviour, it is important to establish a mental relation between one's behaviour and its environmental impact. High hopes rest on timely feedback on personal energy consumption in order to create this link. Great efforts are being put into the development of information systems to achieve this, and smart me...

In order to reduce our society's dependence on fossil fuels, the energy sector has started to undergo massive changes. Information and communications technology (ICT) increasingly plays a key role in this transformation, both on the supply and demand side. While 85% of the residential energy in the DACH region is consumed by space and water heating...

Isolated environmental campaigns focusing on defined target behaviors are rolled out to millions of households every year. Yet it is still unclear whether these programs trigger cross-domain adoption of additional environment-friendly behaviors (positive spillover) or reduced engagement elsewhere. A thorough evaluation of the real net performance o...

Hot water usage accounts for 16% of household demand for energy, much more than lighting and cooking (5% each) and is comparable to electricity usage for appliances (21%). As a means of helping consumers to save hot water, we present a novel self-powered water consumption sensor that enables direct consumption feedback. We equipped 91 Swiss househo...

Consumer electronics (CE) consumed 193 TWh in 2010, representing about 13% of all U.S. household electricity use. Together, the top three device categories – televisions, computers, and set-top boxes – consumed about 122 TWh in 2010, more than 60% of the total. We evaluated residential CE electricity consumption in the U.S. for mid-2010 using a det...