Who benefits from demand flexibility? A sociotechnical modeling framework for technology portfolios and outcomes in Los Angeles

Abstract

Residential decarbonization increasingly relies on households to reduce electricity use and provide grid flexibility. These transitions can also create household benefits through lower electricity consumption. Yet households differ sharply in their ability to adopt the technologies that enable these outcomes. Housing tenure, financial resources, building age, and control over energy investments shape which technologies households can install and combine. Building on a previously developed agent-based model of residential technology adoption, we develop a sociotechnical modeling framework that traces how these structural conditions drive technology choices, reshape household technology portfolios, and alter time-resolved electricity demand. Applied to a synthetic population in the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power service territory, the model shows that structural constraints alter both the pace and composition of adoption. After ten simulated years, 70% of households in the least structurally constrained neighborhoods adopt at least three technologies, compared with 26% in the most structurally constrained neighborhoods. Earlier adoption and broader portfolios concentrate absolute annual electricity savings and peak-demand reductions in better-positioned neighborhoods. When annual savings are measured relative to baseline consumption, differences across groups largely narrow. By contrast, proportional peak-demand disparities persist because smart thermostats remain less common in more constrained neighborhoods. Unequal access to enabling technologies therefore shapes both the household benefits realized through demand-side decarbonization and the flexibility households can provide to the grid. These differences emerge before utility programs, incentives, or rate designs influence participation. Planning models that assume uniform household capabilities risk overstating the flexibility available from structurally constrained neighborhoods while concealing how demand-side benefits are unevenly distributed.