There’s a literal 'fairness tax'—it’s way more expensive to rotate power outages than to just black out the same unlucky neighborhood every time.
March 20, 2026
Original Paper
Fair and Flexible Scheduling for Dynamic Energy Load Control under Stochastic Demand
SSRN · 6293323
The Takeaway
Utilities often curtail the same industrial users during peaks because it is the most efficient way to protect the grid. This study proves that forcing 'fairness' by spreading outages across all participants creates a measurable increase in costs, revealing a direct trade-off between social equity and energy efficiency.
From the abstract
Managing peak electricity demand is a central concern for utilities because a small number of high-load hours account for a disproportionate share of operating costs. To mitigate peaks, utilities offer direct load control contracts under which they decide each day which participants to curtail and for what duration, subject to operational and contractual constraints. We study two design levers central to program viability: fairness and flexibility. We model daily fairness, which balances calls a