According to a study, consumers are unwilling to allow electricity providers to remotely limit the use of their home appliances without significant rate discounts.

According to a study by Accenture, consumers are unwilling to allow electricity providers to remotely limit the use of their home appliances as part of electricity management plans without significant rate discounts. In addition, the findings showed that almost half of consumers would be deterred from joining electricity management programs if their electricity bills were to increase as a result.

The survey, which included more than 9,000 consumers in 17 countries, reported that while some consumers are open to the idea of moving to electricity management plans, which allow suppliers to actively help households use energy more efficiently through limiting of when home appliances are used, price discounts would be demanded in return.

Sixteen percent of consumers surveyed said they would allow electricity providers to limit their use of certain household appliances remotely if they had no option to reverse the action taken by the provider and if no discount was offered. Twenty-four percent said they would give utilities control when offered at least a 10 percent discount and 35 percent said they would give utilities control if offered a discount of 20 percent.

Privacy concerns were also an issue among respondents. More than two in five respondents or 41 percent, cited their energy provider’s selling the saved electricity as a result of the programs at a profit, as a deterrent to entering the program. One-third of respondents said they would also be discouraged from such programs if the electricity provider had greater access to the consumer’s personal electricity consumption data.

“Residential consumers who allow major household appliances to run at off-peak times will potentially receive a financial benefit,” said Greg Guthridge, managing director of Accenture’s Utility Customer Care Practice. “However, utilities must address consumer concerns about external control, privacy and lifestyle implications before broad-based adoption by consumers will occur. In the end, they need to articulate a simple and intuitive value-proposition that resonates with the end-consumer.”

The report also found that 29 percent of consumers surveyed said they trust their electricity providers to advise them on actions to take to optimize electricity consumption. In deregulated markets such as Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom trust was lower hovering between 10 and 17 percent. In highly regulated markets such as Singapore, China and South Korea, trust was the highest between 40 and 54 percent.