Energy demand trials carried out within the Market Design research programme have shown that households with electric heating react to sudden increases in electricity prices by temporarily reducing their consumption. In trials that took place during the 2004/2005 winter, households were exposed to extreme pricing similar to what we saw in Sweden in the morning of January 8th 2010, when prices at the Nordic power exchange reached 1000 EUR /MWh. Households participating in the trial reacted by cutting their electricity consumption by half during the hours that electricity was very expensive. A later trial, described in Market Designs’s latest booklet “Letting price decide - demand response in practice” - has further shown that smart technology makes it relatively simple to automatically reduce consumption peaks without households actually noticing the effects.