The users involved in the research project conducted by Uppsala University are all customers of Sala-Heby Energi. The organisational vision and business concept are to work locally with sustainable energy issues, creating large and local change through customer understanding and establishing relations to customers. To Sala-Heby Energi, the long-term relation to customers is crucial and the company has many activities aiming to interact with its customers, such as clubs for people interested in locally produced electricity, social events and information meetings. They also arrange theme days for their customers where they are invited to visit other households with innovative energy solutions. 

Ten years ago, Sala-Heby Energi introduced a demand-based time-of-use distribution tariff for households in single-family houses. As this tariff only applies to some of the company’s customers, the step was to develop an offer for households in multi-apartment buildings. Sala-Heby Energi in collaboration with Uppsala University has therefore initiated a research project aiming to support the development and evaluate the offer. The user has a central role in the project, both by being a customer to an energy company with a strong focus on customer relations and also by being the receiver of a new offer to be studied through a research project. To capture ideas and experiences of the customers, focus group meetings will be arranged. 

The relation between S3C and the research project was initiated in early 2013, when SP staff contacted the leader of the research team at Uppsala University. Their research on the demand-based time-of-use distribution tariff of Sala-Heby Energi was highly relevant to S3C in terms of representing a successful Smart Energy project. Contacts with the energy company itself resulted in Sala-Heby Energi being included as a supporting project to the S3C project. Thus, the initial contact between the research team, Sala-Heby Energi and S3C focused on collecting information through interviews. 

Further, the Sala-Heby project became an S3C trial project in order to receive support in their task of creating and studying a new contract to households in multi-apartment buildings. A background study and recommendations on the design of the contract were to be conducted by Uppsala University.

In the early stages of the collaboration process with S3C, it was established that support and information from S3C would be most useful in the initial background studies on incentives and contracts, supporting the research team from Uppsala University. Since then, there has been continuous contact between SP staff and the research team at Uppsala University to pinpoint which specific aspects the S3C project could contribute with. These discussions eventually resulted in the identification of a number of guidelines that could be useful as background information to the research team in the contract design process:

The guidelines have been used as input to an initial background study on incentives by the research team and as inspiration for the development of a new offer to Sala-Heby Energi’s customers. The guidelines have primarily contributed to the project by providing information on the status of research in relevant topics, as well as good examples from other countries. 

For more information on the Sala-Heby project, please visit the Sala-Heby Energi website at: http://www.sheab.se/ (Swedish)