Assessing the impacts of retail tariff design on the electric power sector : a case study on the ComEd Service Territory in Illinois

Cost-reflective electricity tariffs hold the key to enabling a wider adoption of distributed energy resources. Standard residential electricity tariffs have a flat monthly charge and a static volumetric energy charge that do not provide the correct economic signals to customers and do not reflect the costs of maintaining and operating the grid. Besides subsidies or specific supports to certain technologies, there are currently limited economic incentives for customers to invest in numerous technology options, like home batteries and AC controls, that could collectively and in response to efficient price signals: reduce system peak load, reduce greenhouse gas emission, provide greater system reliability, and reduce system costs. This thesis qualitatively explores the cost drivers of the electricity system and their implications for residential tariff design, as well as the economic inefficiencies and cross subsides that are present under the current volumetric rate tariff.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Lee, Nelson,S.M.(Nelson S.)Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Karen Tapia-Ahumada.

• Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.
• Technology and Policy Program.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122191

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/122191