Turning your house into a 'smart home' to save energy might be great for the planet, but it probably won't save you a single dime.
March 27, 2026
Original Paper
Energy system impacts of globally versus locally optimised residential heating and cooling demand response in Finland across multiple weather years — A North European case study
SSRN · 6471140
The Takeaway
While using smart tech to shift heating and cooling loads can save power grids millions, the actual savings for an individual household in this North European study were less than €1 per square meter per year. This massive gap between collective benefit and individual reward makes the technology's widespread adoption economically irrational for regular people.
From the abstract
Widespread residential demand response (DR) could potentially help alleviate the growing pressure on power grids caused by increasing shares of variable renewable energy, but knowledge of its energy market impacts is still lacking. This study modelled different penetrations of residential electric heating and cooling DR in Finland as a part of a 2025 North European energy system for weather years spanning 2011–2016 using the Backbone energy system optimisation framework. The impacts of two DR st