Quality and Usability

Sense4En - Visualisation of Energy Efficiency Performance and User Behavior

Project premise is that households make a huge case for savings and CO2 emissions reduction, as they account for 39% of the EU-27 final energy consumption. There, technology development will not attain alone energy-efficiency. Rather, the behavior of the individuals is decisive, as willingness to invest on technology, use it correctly and change consolidated habits will finally assess energy consumption. Results can be attained and consolidated only if users get informed, 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.


Sense4En wants to induce a step-change. The project develops user friendly smart metering applications to support consumers save money and energy while mitigating climate change. Learning from experience and focusing on consumers, it implements incentive strategies and robust IT-enabled services rooted in behavioral sciences while accounting for our cultural attitude of amusement-while-doing. The Sense4En consortium will test the prototypes and analyze the induced savings. Within an Open Innovation Slam, competitors from all over Europe will feed the prototype with ideas for Apps and Web based social games. Based on this work, a model for a large energy provider will be developed.

 

Time frame: 04/2012 - 04/2014

QU team members: T. Westermann, S. Möller

Partner: ETH Zürich, Vattenfall, TU Berlin

Project website: www.sense4en.tu-berlin.de