# A Comparison of Households' Energy Balance in Residential Smart Grid Pilots in the Netherlands
## 5 Conclusions  
In this paper, we have analyzed energy data from 287 households from five different locations to determine seven key performance indicators: monthly electricity consumption (range of pilots averages on household level: 100-600 kWh) and production (idem: 4-200 kWh), annually imported (idem: 3.1-4.5 MWh) and exported (idem: 0.2-1 MWh) electricity, residual load, peak of imported (idem: 4.8-6.8 kW) and exported (idem: 0.3-2.2 kW) electricity, import simultaneity (idem: 20-70.5%) and feed-in simultaneity (idem: 75-89%), self-sufficiency (idem: 18-20%), and (7) self-consumption (idem: 50-70%).  
Our results not only identified the average household of the pilots, diagnosed the extrema as the households with outlier characteristics and peak loads, but also distinguished the community values. On community level, SCRs and SSRs are noticeably higher, showing that households are able to supply part of the electricity need of their neighbors. Local use of PV-generated electricity decreases the stress on the LV/MV transformer and accompanying transmission losses. Apart from the load curves shown in this paper, it was found that the electrification of heating systems in buildings which use heat pumps, leads to an increase of their annual electricity consumption and peak loads of approximately 30%, compared to average Dutch households without heat pumps. Further it the investigated households showed a low self-sufficiency of around 20%, mainly because of their use of relatively small PV systems. Therefore, they could not be classified as energy neutral. To increase the self-sufficiency of households, further investigations are required to optimize smart grid systems. It becomes apparent that households shifting to electric heating (heat pumps) will face a significant increase in electricity consumption compared to the Dutch average. This is quite relevant for the Netherlands, as all newly built buildings are not allowed to be connected to the gas network anymore due to the Climate Agreement (klimaatakkoord). The integration of heat pumps will also have implications for network operators in terms of increased costs for reinforcing the grid to accommodate increasing demand. Especially attributed to the high simultaneity of consumption of heat pumps due to correlation with ambient temperature. Relatively low self-sufficiency ratios and high self-consumption ratios have been obtained in the pilots, since the installed PV capacity was rather small. Self-sufficiency is expected to increase with the current trend of installing larger solar installations on roof tops. In perspective, integration and size of the battery will be part of a future work, by using better monitoring and more households' data to increase statistical significance.  
Writing-original draft preparation C.G.; formal analysis, investigation, and algorithms, C.G. and W.S.; conceptualization and validation, C.G., W.S., A.R., I.L., and W.v.S.; resources, review, editing, A.R., I.L., and W.v.S.; supervision and data acquisition, A.R. and W.v.S.  
This research has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the ERA-Net Smart Grids plus, grant number 646039, from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).  
We would like to acknowledge all participants in the smart grid pilots (PowerMatching City, Jouw Energie Moment, Rendement voor lederen) involved in this study for their willingness to share their data, experiences, and knowledge with the researchers. We would like to thank [PERSON], [PERSON] and [PERSON] for facilitating the data acquisition, and last but not least, our colleagues [PERSON], [PERSON] and [PERSON] for their kind advices and suggestions.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.  
The content and views expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinion of the ERA-Net SG+ initiative. Any reference given does not necessarily imply the endorsement by ERA-Net SG+.