THE CONSUMERS ENERGY ANALYSIS ENVIRONMENT

This article describes how residential energy consumers measure and an alyze their own energy consumption and energy costs. Using in-depth in terviews, we find more extensive data collection and analysis by resid ential energy consumers than has been previously documented in the ene rgy literature. However, the conclusions consumers can draw from their analytical efforts are restricted by the form their analytical effort s are restricted by the form in which they receive price and consumpti on data and their limited analytic capabilities. The relative informat ion processing strengths of consummers are compared with those of inst itutions such as energy utilities, leading to the conclusion that many of the analytic tasks are currently assigned to the less efficient pa rties, degrading decision quality and creating a market barrier to ene rgy conservation. We suggest a more efficient allocation of data colle ction and analysis between the consumer and energy utility.