AFRY Styr och Informationstjänster Konsumenter (2023)

Consultant report commissioned by Energimarknadsinspektionen (Ei). AFRY Management Consulting (with inUse, part of AFRY), final report dated 2023-11-14. Maps the Swedish market for consumer “styr- och informationstjänster” (control and information services) and evaluates two design concepts for showing them on Elpriskollen, Ei’s electricity-contract comparison site.

Title: Slutrapport: Styr- och informationstjänster för konsumenter på elmarknaden. Commissioning body: Energimarknadsinspektionen (Ei), diarienr 2023-103343.

Context: Follows Ei’s Konsumenter och efterfrågeflexibilitet (2023) and Konsumentperspektiv på efterfrågeflexibilitet; supports a possible revision of the ellagen reporting rule so that control/information services can be shown on Elpriskollen. Only a few retailers had voluntarily reported such services to Ei.

Scope and method

Definitions follow Ei: a styrtjänst is hardware and/or software that controls when and how much a user’s electric products consume; an informationstjänst provides information on use, production, prices and costs. A flexibility service is explicitly not a styrtjänst. Indirect controls (time-differentiated tariffs, hourly-price contracts) count as market signals and are excluded. “Consumer” means a household consumer below 100,000 kWh/year. One app offering several kinds of information counts as several services.

Part 1 (market): desk study of all retailers’ websites plus other actors identified from Ei’s earlier reports; six actor interviews (3 retailers, 3 other actors: heating control, EV-charging control, home-battery/own-production optimisation), 2023-09-11 to 09-26. Only services explicitly described on actors’ own websites were registered. Part 2 (Elpriskollen): eight semi-structured consumer interviews (5 villa, 3 bostadsrätt; 2023-10-03 to 10-29), sketches and a clickable prototype.

Key findings: market landscape

Service inventory

44 services identified: 36 information services and 8 control services. Information services are mostly apps showing consumption, cost, spot price, etc. The most common control service is EV-charging control via a smart charge box; automatic control is most often against household power limits (effektgräns) and electricity price. Price steering has become popular due to recent high prices.

The eight control services (most to least common)

1. EV charging via charge box
2. Load and/or phase balancing
3. Heating-system control
4. Control of smart products
5. Home-battery control
6. EV charging via the car’s software
7. Automation software
8. E-bike charging control

(A further “EV charging, unspecified” entry appears in the list with a footnote.) No service controlling solar production was found; solar is optimised indirectly via a battery or by shifting loads. V2G is mentioned as a possible future Elpriskollen category: many smart charge boxes are prepared for it, but it is not fully developed in Sweden.

Control modes and seven automation signals

Control comes in three forms requiring different consumer engagement: remote control, scheduling, and automatic control. Automatic control follows seven signals: elprisoptimering (price), effektgräns (household power limit), klimatpåverkan (renewable share), egen produktion, balansering (system load, ancillary/flexibility markets via aggregation), nättariffsoptimering, and inomhuskomfort. Load/phase balancing (power-limit control) is the most common automatic control; price steering appears across EV, heating, battery and smart-product services.

Actors

172 actors identified, of which 138 (80%) are retailers. Eight actor categories: elhandelsföretag, elnätsföretag, energitjänsteföretag, tillverkare, återförsäljare, automationsföretag, aggregator, installatör (a firm can hold several roles; each is assigned its main one). Of the retailers, 22 offer no service and 49 offer at least one control and one information service; 15 of the other actors offer both. Other actors more often offer a complete hardware-plus-software package; retailers mostly offer apps (often white-label) integrating third-party services. Offerings are increasingly overlapping.

Seven conditions (villkor) attached to services

Control (e.g. power of attorney), grid (metering type, e.g. hourly settlement; must be a network customer), electricity trading (contract type, often hourly-price agreement), binding period, notice period, monthly cost and one-off cost. Binding and notice periods are described as unusual; retailer services usually follow the supply contract’s terms. Compatible equipment and installation matter but were not classed as villkor.

The effekttariff gap

Interviewed actors fear the time-differentiated effekttariffer that DSOs must include by 1 January 2027 could become a signal counter to the electricity price, but also that new services steering on the tariff may appear. Only one company (an energy-service company/manufacturer) was found taking network tariffs into account. AFRY sees two possible outcomes: new tariff-steering services arrive, or the need is already covered by power-limit/load-balancing services that keep peaks down. Consumer education on effekttariffer is likely needed. (The report does not attribute the gap to DSO tariff fragmentation or propose a central data infrastructure; that link is a wiki inference, see Elmarknadshubb.)

Three user patterns

Framed as situations rather than fixed groups (the same person can move between them):

The report does not say which pattern is most common or most underserved.

UX analysis: Elpriskollen

Two concepts were developed. A: stepwise refinement (recommended): built on the existing Elpriskollen structure; a 2-3 step flow (prerequisites such as hourly metering and equipment, then what the user wants to use it for, then a result list filterable further, then a detail page linking to the provider). B: facet search: show the full list up front and filter. B is powerful but the service list is uneven and overlapping, and it is harder to be pedagogical. AFRY recommends A because it leaves room for explanation, allows refinement at the end, and is similar enough to the current service to build with little structural change. The design deliberately does not separate control from information services (users care about benefit, and many apps combine both), though information options are listed first.

Recommendations to Ei: investigate how to raise interest among consumers not yet curious (Elpriskollen mostly helps those already interested); how often to report; how to identify all actors (periodic market scans); and how to treat non-Swedish firms.

Relation to existing wiki content

• Demand Response: Confirms the information/control service distinction; maps supply-side market landscape from the provider perspective; only one effekttariff-aware service found
• Flexibility Market: 172-actor market map; the report treats flexibility services as distinct from control services (control is a prerequisite); three user patterns inform consumer segmentation
• Elmarknadshubb: wiki inference (not in the report): the effekttariff gap and DSO tariff heterogeneity are addressed by the DHV proposal
• Aggregation: The “balansering” signal (control via aggregation/virtual networks) and the aggregator actor category are the aggregation-relevant parts; battery control is one of the eight control services
• Energy Communities: No energy-sharing service type appears in the report (not mapped)
• Vehicle-to-Grid: EV charging is the most common control service; V2G is mentioned only as a possible future category

Data gaps

• Market penetration data for each of the 8 control service types — the report maps service existence but not adoption rates (number of customers enrolled per service)