Designing live energy performance feedback for public buildings in Leicester

Panel: 3. Local action and national examples

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Graeme Stuart, De Montfort University, United Kingdom
Caroline Wilson, De Montfort University, United Kingdom
Katherine Irvine, De Montfort University, United Kingdom
Richard Bull, De Montfort University, United Kingdom

Abstract

Buildings represent a huge potential for energy savings, in the UK buildings account for 45% of energy consumption. Buildings owned and managed by the public sector make up more than 10% of the EU building stock. The EU “smartspaces” project is implementing ICT enabled Energy Decision Support Services (EDSS) in public buildings at 11 pilot sites across Europe.

In recent years there has been much interest in the use of feedback systems to encourage energy behaviour change but very little literature on feedback in the non-domestic setting. The Leicester smartspaces system, to be rolled out in the autumn of 2013 will provide users with a live, half-hourly comparison of energy performance across 25 public buildings.

A new indicator of energy performance is proposed. The indicator relates consumption for the current half-hour with the distribution of equivalent historical values. The indicator is comparable across buildings and can be presented to the user as simple emoticons (e.g. happy/neutral/sad faces). The indicator is described and examples are simulated using historic datasets.

The context in which the indicator is presented is also described. Users are encouraged to cooperate within each building in competition with other buildings by contributing to a public forum. It is intended to support an active, energy aware community of staff and visitors with direct access to energy professionals.

The system is intended to support a true feedback loop between energy performance and behaviour change by hiding the complexity of energy consumption data. Ordinary building users who know of energy wastage in their workplace will be able to share this knowledge with colleagues. Users will know what to do and will be able to judge whether their efforts are having an effect. Over time, users will see the effects of their actions clearly presented, in context. This continuous feedback provides constant reinforcement and is a feature often missing from such systems.