Laundry, energy and time: insights from 20 years of time-use diary data in the United Kingdom
Laundry, energy and time: insights from 20 years of time-use diary data in the United Kingdom
The uneven temporal distribution of domestic energy demand is a well-known phenomenon that is increasingly troublesome for energy infrastructures and sustainable or low carbon energy systems. People tend to demand energy, and especially electricity, at specific times of the day and they do not necessarily do so when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. The potential value of demand response as a solution rests on understanding the nature of temporal energy demand and the timing of the interconnected domestic activities that drive it. The paper uses current and historical time-use diary data to explore the temporal change in laundry practices in the United Kingdom over the last 20 years. 'Doing the laundry' is frequently cited as a potentially 'flexible demand' and yet very little is known about when people do the laundry, who does it at particular times, how this has changed and what implications this might have for the flexibility of demand. Through this analysis of laundry, the paper starts to unpack some of the ‘doings’ that contribute to current known energy demand and considers the extent to which they may or may not enable flexibility in the context of consumer demand response.
RCUKDEMAND
125-136
Anderson, Ben
01e98bbd-b402-48b0-b83e-142341a39b2d
December 2016
Anderson, Ben
01e98bbd-b402-48b0-b83e-142341a39b2d
Anderson, Ben
(2016)
Laundry, energy and time: insights from 20 years of time-use diary data in the United Kingdom.
Energy Research & Social Science, 22, .
(doi:10.1016/j.erss.2016.09.004).
Abstract
The uneven temporal distribution of domestic energy demand is a well-known phenomenon that is increasingly troublesome for energy infrastructures and sustainable or low carbon energy systems. People tend to demand energy, and especially electricity, at specific times of the day and they do not necessarily do so when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. The potential value of demand response as a solution rests on understanding the nature of temporal energy demand and the timing of the interconnected domestic activities that drive it. The paper uses current and historical time-use diary data to explore the temporal change in laundry practices in the United Kingdom over the last 20 years. 'Doing the laundry' is frequently cited as a potentially 'flexible demand' and yet very little is known about when people do the laundry, who does it at particular times, how this has changed and what implications this might have for the flexibility of demand. Through this analysis of laundry, the paper starts to unpack some of the ‘doings’ that contribute to current known energy demand and considers the extent to which they may or may not enable flexibility in the context of consumer demand response.
Text
Anderson_Laundry-Energy-Time-ERSS-Accepted_Complete.pdf
- Accepted Manuscript
Available under License Other.
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Accepted/In Press date: 14 September 2016
Published date: December 2016
Keywords:
RCUKDEMAND
Organisations:
Energy & Climate Change Group
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 400478
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/400478
PURE UUID: 9db4aa0c-0620-4463-b008-b84a6d0c5ab7
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Date deposited: 16 Sep 2016 14:18
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 05:53
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