Plug Adoption and Use for Smarter Energy (PAUSE) Demand

India’s electricity sector faces two major challenges: rising emissions from fossil fuel generation and the difficulty of maintaining grid reliability amid growing demand. Although India has rapidly expanded renewable energy, a key challenge remains managing intermittency without relying on fossil fuels. Large-scale storage and transmission investments are important, but demand flexibility offers a cost-effective way to support the energy transition. Smart energy technologies now enable automated demand-side management, allowing consumers to provide flexibility to the energy system with minimal cognitive or behavioral effort.

Using smart plugs and switches, device-level energy consumption can be monitored and controlled. Residents may allow selected time-flexible appliances to be managed remotely so that researchers, and eventually utilities or grid operators, can optimize energy use. Excess demand can be shifted from peak to off-peak hours or to periods of high renewable energy supply through short switch-off events. With prior consent, the technology can turn off plugs and switches connected to specific appliances, and users receive rewards for not overriding these events.

A randomized evaluation will measure the effectiveness of interventions designed to increase consumers’ willingness to adopt low-cost automation technologies and the extent to which they participate in automated switch-off events. Researchers aim to understand how the integration of renewable energy can be improved, how power procurement costs can be lowered for distribution companies, and how households can reduce their energy bills while playing an active role in shaping a cleaner and more reliable electricity system.