Researchers are discovering that unreliable energy is especially harmful for the most vulnerable members of society.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/pricing-electricity-by-demand-hits-poor-elderly-disabled-harder/
The motivating principle behind demand-response pricing is that demand is flexible. People can put off running their clothes dryer, or put up with a few hours of somewhat warmer temperatures. But that's actually not true for everyone. The elderly and disabled, for example, may not tolerate even a few hours of elevated temperatures or could have medical equipment that simply can't be shut down. This could also hit the poor harder, as they tend to live in housing with less efficient appliances and poor insulation.
To find out whether there was any evidence that this sort of uneven impact was taking place, researchers Lee White and Nicole Sintov tracked a trial run of demand-response pricing. The trial took place in an unnamed utility in the US Southwest during summer. Because of the heat, there tends to be a spike in demand as people get home from work and turn on the air conditioning. To lower this demand, the utility raised the price of electricity used during this peak, offering two different plans. One simply had elevated prices for the whole period where demand was elevated; the second used even higher prices but limited them to a shorter period at the time of highest demand.
To figure out how this affected vulnerable groups, the researchers got thousands of the participants to fill out surveys regarding their experience.
The results confirmed some of the worries. The elderly and disabled ended up paying more than others under the same pricing scheme. (Households with children saw no significant change.) On the plus side, the lower-income households managed to use the policy to cut down on their costs relative to others on a similar pricing setup. Not surprisingly, however, they reported increased discomfort during the period of the test, presumably because they ran the air conditioning less often.
