Watson, Nicole; (2024) Beyond the supplier hub: Public attitudes towards multiple electricity suppliers and implications for policy. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

United Kingdom consumers can have only one electricity supplier at a time, which poses challenges for non-traditional and small-scale market players offering services to support grid decarbonisation and flexibility. One solution is allowing contracts with multiple electricity suppliers, but little is known about public attitudes towards this. This thesis uses a mixed-methods design to investigate public demand for domestic multiple supplier use cases. Expert interviews identified policy-relevant use cases including buying a portion of electricity from local suppliers or Peer-to-Peer trading, and having separate suppliers for electric vehicles, heat pumps, and smart appliances. Large-N online surveys tested public demand and influencing factors. Four adaptive choice-based conjoint experiments tested which aspects of the multiple supplier relationship were most impactful, using nationally representative samples and a sample of EV owners. When presented with their own optimised tariff, 92 to 98% of participants reported interest in engaging with each use case. Features negatively impacting uptake included long contracts and multiple bills. A nationally representative survey explored associations between individual characteristics and uptake of multiple suppliers. 71 to 82% reported interest in each use case. Attitudinal factors were more influential than socio-demographics, with the most consistent predictors of uptake being respondents’ environmental attitudes and perceived complexity of the offering. Text-highlighting was used to understand aspects that were (un)appealing to respondents; results were consistent with the choice experiments. A novel petition-style measure was applied: only 9% of respondents engaged with this but, of those, 87% expressed support for regulations to enable multiple suppliers. Results offer evidence on potential uptake of policy-relevant multiple supplier use cases; conditions that could maximise uptake; and how this may differ across the population. Findings suggest that, if delivered under favourable arrangements, multiple suppliers would be highly socially acceptable, suggesting public opinion would not be a barrier to delivering this model.

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