Gossen’s First Law in the Modeling for Demand Side Management: A First Heat Pump Case Study

Gossen’s First Law, also known as the law of diminishing marginal utility, describes the decreasing marginal utility gained from an increased consumption of a good or service and this is observed in various areas. This paper proposes the hypothesis that Gossen’s First Law also holds in the modeling for Demand Side Management. It motivates the exploration of how the utility of a model depends on its complexity in this context, in order to provide a guideline that helps developing more simple and efficient models. We then propose a methodology for this investigation and apply it to a ground source heat pump in a stand-alone house. For this purpose, four mathematical models are developed with different degrees of simplification based on a detailed mathematical model. The model complexity is then quantified, and the simulation results are compared with actual measurement data to explore the utility of each model. The first results are in line with our hypothesis. Finally, we outline the next steps to provide more results and thoroughly verify the hypothesis.