Neue Aufschlüsse über die Elektrizitätsnachfrage der schweizerischen Haushalte

In spite of its "clean" image, electricity is not without external effects, which can be increasingly traced to the households, whose demand is characterized by considerable time-of-day and seasonal variation. Thus, a reduction of this variation may permit the cancellation or at least deferral of additions to production and transmission capacities. This contribution purports to shed light on the relationship between time-dependent household demand for eletricity and the pricing of power. Own price elasticities, estimated from individual data, are significantly negative with few exceptions, and the cross price elasticities positive. Clearly, the pricing policies of power producers have the potential for stabilizing and smoothing household demand for power, thus contributing to the mitigation of external effects.