Sense4EN

Visualisation of Energy Efficiency Performance and User Behaviour

EIT Climate-KIC project

Technology development will not attain alone energy-efficiency in buildings. Willingness to invest on technology, use it correctly and change consolidated habits will finally assess energy consumption. Accordingly, the project develops user friendly smart metering applications to support consumers save money and energy while mitigating climate change.

Households account for 39% of the EU-27 final energy consumption. The case for savings and CO2 emissions reduction is huge, but results can be attained and consolidated only if users get actively engaged and new approaches replace routine energy consumption attitudes. First large scale experiments of smart metering and accompanying services prove that this is far from trivial.
The Research wants to induce a step-change. Learning from experience and focusing on consumers, it will implement incentive strategies and robust IT-enabled services rooted in behavioral sciences while accounting for our cultural attitude of amusement-while-doing. The Research consortium will test the prototype and analyze the induced savings in heat and electricity. Within an Open Innovation Slam, competitors from all over Europe will feed the prototype with ideas for Apps and a Web based social game. Based on this work, a model for a large energy provider will be developed.

Projectpartners:
TU Berlin: Quality and Usability Labs
Vattenfall
ETH Zurich: Bits to Energy Lab

Project Management: Ivana Agnolin

Research: Johanna Moser