Real-time, appliance-level electricity use feedback system: How to engage users?

Abstract

a b s t r a c tEngage is a rapidly deployable, retrofit energy monitoring system developed for direct support of a novel energy use behavior investigation and a large-scale deployment in campus apartments. We describe the end-to-end system and report results related to web dashboard engagement during a year-long experiment. The objective was to determine user engagement with real-time and easily accessible information about personal energy consumption. Leveraging low-cost components, this system was designed to measure separately appliance plug load, heating and cooling, and lighting electrical load in dense-occupancy building environments. We developed and used an open source technology for measurement of plug load and developed signal processing algorithms to significantly improve measurement accuracy. We also developed proxy sensors to measure heating and cooling and lighting. Our results indicate that 90% of the dashboard activity was undertaken by 50% of the participants and that website engagement was more likely in mid-day and more effective in combination with email reminders. Energy conservation was achieved when combining the dashboard with public information about energy consumption.Published by Elsevier B.V.

Saving power to conserve your reputation? The effectiveness of private versus public information

“…Bathrooms are shared between rooms and were not monitored by the experiment. More information on the technology is provided in Chen et al (2014).…”

Impact of eco-feedback on the behavior of campus users

“…Emeakaroha et al (2014) [8], R.K. Jain et al (2013) [9], H.-M. Chen et al (2012) [10], V.L. Chen et al (2014) [11], P.M. Johnson et al (2010) [12], and M.J. Bekker et al (2010) [13]. Results are summarized in Table 1.…”

“…They set up this feedback in two adjacent V.L. Chen et al [11] proposed a feedback architecture to monitor separately HVAC, lighting and wall socket electrical energy. They found that 80% of dashboard activity was generated by 25% of students.…”

“…As a code can be hacked, data are not identifiable (a set of data can't be linked to a user). A common way to interest users is sending them personalized emails [8,9,11]. Other additional incentives can be proposed such as rewards, competition or peer influence.…”

“…They exclude HVAC systems because they are often centralized and students don't have control over them. However, one of these studies presents a simple way to monitor HVAC energy consumption by setting up thermistors in order to determine when the system is on or off [11].…”