The smart grid is said to be important for the deployment of renewable energy sources and
thereby the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The flexibility of demand that demand
side management aim to achieve is said to facilitate the integration of intermittent renewable
energy sources such as wind power and photovoltaic power. Consistent with what Johnstone
& Hascic (2012) argues, it seems reasonable that all intermittent renewable energy sources
benefits from improving storage and management of demand in general, and that this is a
favourable alternative compared to investing in each single technology to reduce the
production irregularity.
In two projects a more active focus was given to the integration of renewable energy sources.
The Stockholm Royal Seaport and the eFlex project also had a signal for renewable energy,
apart from the price signal. The exact design of the CO2 signal that will be used in the
Stockholm Royal Seaport project isn’t clear but it appears to be an important tool to achieve
the goal of lowering the emissions of CO2 per capita to 1.5 tons per year. In the eFlex project
a slightly different approach was used where the renewable signal was one alternative that the
customers were able to choose, but not the standard option. This approach could be seen as
leaving the choice and responsibility to the customer, but also as a way of actually offering
the customers the opportunity to make a conscious choice.
The amount of customers who chose the alternative that took the amount of renewable energy
into consideration in the eFlex project shows that there is a significant interest in
environmental issues among the customers. It is important to capitalize on this interest by
offering customized services, both from an environmental perspective and the potential of
reducing emissions and from a business perspective to attract customers.
It is discussed in the SmartHouse/SmartGrid prject that a price signal would be high during
periods of a large share of electricity from renewable sources is in grid since those sources
will be cheaper as purchase of fuel isn’t required. Thus it is suggested that a price signal
would be enough to support a large share of renewable energy sources. Thus, it is reasoned
about the subject of including another dimension to the price signal, but believed not to be
necessary to have a specific signal that is based on the type of energy sources used. The result