Design of a utility competitive assessment experiment: the Residential Energy Usage Comparison Project

The authors describe the research activities undertaken in the statistical design of the Residential Energy Usage Comparison (REUC) Project, an innovative experiment being undertaken at Southern California Edison Company. Innovative analysis techniques are developed to address the important design issues of sample design and stratification, and optical allocation of end-use data collection monitors. A representative sample of customers was chosen that will be used to draw statistical inferences about prominent segments of the residential customer population. Each household in the sample will have appliance loads monitored at five-minute intervals.<>