Co-designing the next generation of home energy management systems with lead-users

Abstract

Home energy management systems are widely promoted as essential components of future low carbon economies. It is argued in this paper that assumptions surrounding their deployment, and the methods used to design them, emerge from discredited models of people and energy. This offers an explanation for why their field trial performance is so inconsistent. A first of a kind field trial is reported. Three eco communities took part in a comprehensive participatory design exercise as lead users. The challenge was to help users synchronise their energy use behaviours with the availability of locally generated renewable energy sources. To meet this aim, a set of highly novel Home Energy Management interfaces were co-designed and tested. Not only were the designs radically different to the norm, but they also yielded sustained user engagement over a six-month follow-up period. It is argued that user-centred design holds the key to unlocking the energy saving potential of new domestic technologies, and this study represents a bold step in that direction

Understanding the Impact of Opinion Leaders’ Characteristics on Online Group Knowledge-Sharing Engagement from In-Group and Out-Group Perspectives: Evidence from a Chinese Online Knowledge-Sharing Community

“…With regard to the entire online group, the primary influence of opinion leaders on a group has long been discussed in many contexts, such as in public management (e.g., studies on the key role of opinion leaders in controlling public opinion and improving government-public relationships) [42][43][44], marketing (e.g., studies on opinion leaders and word-of-mouth marketing) [18,[45][46][47], the media, and information dissemination (e.g., studies on opinion leader identification and classification) [48][49][50][51]. Switching to the knowledge-sharing domain, however, only a few scholars (e.g., Smith [18]) have recognized that opinion leaders have a remarkable capability to reflect the requirements of users or promote the development of organizations [52].…”

“…Some quantitative empirical analytic techniques with real-world evidence could compensate for these weaknesses and reveal the actual relationship. Following this thread, using an online music listening dataset from a music sharing and promotion community, Mu et al distinguished different levels of in-groups (i.e., superordinate and subordinate in-groups) and examined the differential effects of online group influence on digital product consumption by building an econometric model (i.e., Poisson quasi-maximum likelihood estimation) [46]. Kim et al conducted a longitudinal survey of 221 women with breast cancer and discovered that opinion leaders in computer-mediated social support (CMSS) groups, which offer viable online space to share knowledge and experiences in facing illness, can help group members to obtain psychosocial health benefits, such as higher levels of competence in cancer information, breast cancer knowledge, and better problem-focused coping strategies [26].…”

Framing Smart Meter Feedback in Relation to Practice Theory

“…Others [67] note that contextualising feedback by providing social comparisons with the community was experienced positively by most residents participating in the trial but a negative sense of competition was felt by some. There is some indication that co-designing smart meter feedback together with residents can yield higher engagement with the feedback [68]. Smart meter-based gamification of energy and water consumption has also successfully managed to engage residents and resulted in reductions of water consumption in a small trial setting [69].…”

Distributed Optimal Coordinated Operation for Distribution System with the Integration of Residential Microgrids

“…Considerable work has been undertaken concerning home/residential microgrid energy management for the integration of renewables and EVs into residential loads and optimization of energy consumption for end-users [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. However, most of the existing literature is only directed toward a single residential microgrid system, the interaction relationship between RMGs and active distribution network (ADN) were not taken into account.…”

“…In [6], an optimal management system is proposed for the energy management of a residential microgrid, this optimization model considered the renewable energy sources, integration of electric vehicles, vehicle to the grid system, and the energy consumption of a household with the day-ahead electricity price. The researchers in [9][10][11][12] studied the designing of home energy management systems for coordinated optimal control between the behavior of energy use of a household and the operation of distributed energy resources. In [13], optimal management problem of an RMG is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming model aiming for a minimum operating cost of the RMG, and its economic value is assessed from the perspective of a homeowner.…”