Household appropriation of electricity monitors

Abstract

In the perspective of smart grids, 'smart' electricity metres are distributed in European households. When households possess an immediate feedback on their consumption, it is usually stated that they can save between 5 and 15% of their electricity. How households learn to reduce their consumption is hardly ever addressed. In order to know whether 15% saving is a limit or not, it is necessary to understand what people do and learn with the use of an electricity monitor. This question is related to the way the societal energy transition could be achieved. Electricity is invisible, but it is produced, transported and consumed through material devices. This paper explores the dimension of material culture in household energy consumption through the introduction of electricity monitors in different types of households. Through a social experiment, we investigate both how households appropriate an electricity monitor and what they learn when using it. The paper addresses the question of appropriation of such monitors and how it is related to different dimensions: comfort, values, knowledge, skills, material culture. On the basis of an original protocol that intends to interfere as little as possible with users, we installed different metres in 21 Belgian households (including low-income households) and collected data on energy consumption, material culture (appliances, heating system, etc.), different representations of energy, energy-using practices and the effects induced by the introduction of the monitor. We have observed that the metre can change electricity perception, but that only households already interested or involved in energy savings are willing to use and learn with the monitor. We suggest that these devices should accompany a deeper transformation of the 'culture of energy', but they have to become much 'smarter' if their aim is to support more sustainable energy consumption patterns.

Energy monitoring as a practice: Investigating use of the iMeasure online energy feedback tool

“…Pink et al, 2013;Wallenborn et al, 2011). Many of these, at least in part, draw on insights from the theories of practice literature (e.g.…”

“…Indeed, IHDs are often colloquially called 'energy monitors' (e.g. Buchanan et al, 2014;Hargreaves et al, 2013Hargreaves et al, , 2010Wallenborn et al, 2011;Which?, 2015). However it is important to make clear how our definition of energy monitoring implicitly differs from energy feedback.…”

Material participation and the smart grid: Exploring different modes of articulation

“…An identified problem with these studies have been that they traditionally have focused narrowly on individual decision making processes, that depict households as "black boxes" (Darby 2003) neglecting to account for the ways in which feedback must be made sense of, negotiated, and acted upon (or not) amid existing domestic situations often involving multiple household members (Hargreaves et al 2013). Following the lines of this critique new modes of theorising energy consumption, stressing the importance of the social dynamics of households, revealing how energy feedback must be "domesticated" (Aune 2007) or appropriated into a wide range of different households with different routines and practices have developed (Wallenborn et al 2011). One example is Strengers (2008) study of smart meter technologies in the form of in house displays providing information about critical peak pricing, which illustrated how the displays actually enter into more complex social processes in the household than what is commonly discussed among designers.…”

Watts your usage? A field study of householders’ literacy for residential electricity data

“…However, across the countries that have introduced smart meter feedback so far, questions have been raised as to how efficient the smart metering feedback is in helping householders reduce their energy consumption. Despite the potential for eco-feedback interventions to help with domestic energy savings, there are a number of challenges and limitations with the current generation of systems (Wallenborn et al 2011;Pereira et al 2013). Here, we focus on the user interface.…”