ECEEE 2003 SUMMER STUDY – TIME TO TURN DOWN ENERGY DEMAND 1147 Bill me this way! – customer preferences regarding electricity bills in Sweden Kerstin Sernhed, Jurek Pyrko and Juozas Abaravicius Energy Economics and Planning Department of Heat and Power Engineering Lund Institute of Technology P.O. Box 118, SE-221 00 LUND kerstin.sernhed@vok.lth.se Keywords electricity bill, feedback instrument, customer survey, ener- gy behaviour, customer preferences, billing for actual use Abstract The liberalised electricity market in Sweden stresses the fact that the electricity companies must focus on customer satisfaction. Two major customer surveys concentrating on households’ requirements concerning the electricity bill have been carried out in spring 2002. The interest in energy management lies within the fact that the electricity bill can be used as a feedback instrument to influence energy be- haviour and the consumer’s awareness of energy usage. What kind of information do households really want on their bills? What do users think of the information they get on the bill today? How frequently do they want the bill to come? What information or which services should be includ- ed on the bill regarding content, design, medium and fre- quency? How important is it whether the bill is based on actual readings of electricity use and not just on preliminary estimates? The experience of Swedish households indicates that the information included in the electricity bill is difficult to un- derstand. Most customers feel that it is important that the bill is based on current readings of electricity usage. The electricity bills are not coming frequently enough to enable the households to relate their usage of electricity to habits and behaviour in everyday life. Historical information on the household’s electricity usage could be added to the informa- tion in the bill to make such relations between electricity consumption and habits visible, although there are some limitations due to the format of the bills. The cost of the feedback is also an obstacle since neither the sender of the bill nor the receiver is willing to pay for the information. Introduction The power board customer plays a greater role now, since the de-regulation of the electricity market took place in 1996 in Sweden. The image of the energy consumer has changed from simply being seen as an anonymous load in the grid to being seen as a customer (Ketola & Matsson, 2001). The interest in knowing more about a specific cus- tomer has awakened. This interest stems not only from the current necessity to satisfy the customer needs, but informa- tion about the customers also helps the company to priori- tise the customers who are most valuable to the company. In relationship marketing, a relationship between the cus- tomer and the supplier exists. Although electricity is a serv- ice where the customers in general do not experience a high degree of engagement in the relation, this is said to exist when there is a contract between the customer and the sup- plier (Nyberg, 2002). Usually, there is not so much interac- tion and engagement in the relation between electricity suppliers and customers in general. The electricity bill is one of the few contact situations that occur, and the atti- tudes that the customers have to it is reflected on their eval- uation of the service and the relationship. In 1999, Wilhite, Høivik and Olsen reported that histori- cal feedback on energy use led to energy savings and posi- tive customer responses in an experiment in Stavanger. With historical feedback they mean data that shows how much energy the customer uses in every billing period of the current and previous years. Based on these results in Sta- 6,051