Results from the operation of a Social Energy Management System

Converting today's energy supply to a system relying on renewable energy sources (RES) represents an essential goal of the German energy transition. As a prerequisite, however, volatile RES need to be exploited more efficiently. To raise awareness of end customers for this challenge, a gamification based energy management approach is proposed in this paper. The concept aims at motivating consumers to harmonize their electrical consumption with a volatile generation of RES by applying game design elements to the energy related context. To test the approach, a corresponding field test is conducted. The evaluation of the data collected during the field test shows that the consumers' electricity demand can be influenced by intrinsic incentives in order to shift their electrical consumption into times with high RES availability.