A critical review of single fuel and interfuel substitution residential energy demand models

Prepared by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Energy Laboratory Cambridge, Mass., for the United States Department of Energy under contract no. EX-876-A-01-2295, task order 37.The overall purpose of this paper is to formulate a model of residential energy demand that adequately analyzes all aspects of residential consumer energy demand behavior and properly treats the penetration of new technologies, particularly solar photovoltaics, in an explicit fashion. An adequate treatment of energy demand must take account of the fact that both fuel demand and the demand for fuel-burning equipment are jointly derived from the demand for fuel related services. This requires modelling both demand for fuels and for their related equipment. In order to model the equipment demand and the demand for new technologies, the technological characteristics of the alternative equipment must be explicitly analyzed. The formulated model attempts such explicit analyses. In order to formulate such a model this paper first introduces and reviews 19 existing residential energy demand models to ascertain how well they have dealt with these issues