What-a-Watt: exploring electricity production literacy through a long term eco-feedback study

Abstract

This paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of an eco-feedback system capable of providing detailed household consumption information and also real-time production breakdown per energy source. We build on recent studies reporting an increased awareness generated by ecofeedback systems that also integrate micro-production information, taking advantage of a closed grid production network on an island with a high concentration of renewables, we deployed the What-a-Watt system in a building with 9 households for a period of 34 consecutive weeks. Results show that all the participating families have shown increased awareness of the production and distribution of electricity, thus becoming more familiarized with concepts such as the different sources of energy and how their availability relates to external variables such as weather conditions and time of day. Furthermore, our results also show, that the families using our system have managed to reduce their overall consumption. This research is a first attempt to provide more effective eco-feedback systems to consumers by integrating complex Smartgrid information in the feedback.