“It's never telling me that I'm good!” Household experiences of testing a smart home energy management system with a personal threshold on energy use in Sweden

Abstract

Although smart technologies are widely promoted as enabling flexibility in households' energy demand, they often fail to achieve substantial impact. How smart technologies are actually used and to what extent they enable changes of energy-reliant practices in everyday life therefore needs to be better understood. This paper evaluates a smart home energy management system, Ero 2.0, which was tested by households in a multi-residential building in Sweden. To our knowledge, apart from its forerunner, Ero 2.0 is the first of its kind to include a personal threshold on energy use varying with the availability of preferred energy sources. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 participants, complemented by pre and post surveys, answered by 39 and 32 participants respectively. Overall, Ero 2.0 contributed to raised awareness regarding electricity and water use. To some extent, it also contributed to changes in practices, mainly through changed or reduced use of certain functions. However, it was less effective in enabling shifting practices in time. Difficulties to change practices were found to depend on: (1) lack of flexibility in everyday life, (2) limitations in size and layout of the dwelling, (3) lack of incentives and perceived impact, (4) lack of guidance and (5) lack of possibilities to control devices through the interface. The second point is an aspect that to date has received little attention in smart energy research. Design opportunities for future smart home energy management systems are discussed while acknowledging that such technologies cannot alone achieve the transition to more sustainable energy systems.