Abstract
Smart metering studies typically focus on quantifying behavior change. However, little is known about how users understand energy information and analyze and interpret feedback from energy data visualizations. To investigate this, we gave 13 participants from nine UK households an electricity power clamp meter. Prior to installing and using the device, we conducted interviews with participants to gauge their understanding of their home electricity consumption and found that participants varied considerably from limited to substantial energy literacy. Two weeks after the clamp meter had been installed, we conducted a contextual inquiry in which we asked participants to explain the web-based time series visualization of their recorded electricity data. We found that the visualization proved unfit: participants relied on memories and suggested likely routines, while widely being unable to reliably identify specific events in the data visualization. In follow-up interviews 3 months later, we found that participants’ understanding of their home electricity consumption had hardly changed. Finally, we invited participants to generate ideas how smart electricity feedback could be optimized. They named different forms of disaggregation, higher temporal resolution, and interactivity as design requirements. In summary, these results suggest that people find home energy data very difficult to understand and link to everyday actions and behaviors.
Highlights
To meet the many challenges of climate change, a general and widespread transition to a low-carbon economy will be necessary
The UK government has committed to rolling out smart meters to all homes and small businesses by 2020
Many smart meters communicate with inhome displays (IHDs)
Summary
To meet the many challenges of climate change, a general and widespread transition to a low-carbon economy will be necessary. Many smart meters communicate with inhome displays (IHDs) This offers a tangible benefit to the end-user, enabling them to more closely monitor their energy consumption. In addition to smart meters, there are other devices on the market, such as electricity power clamps, that come with mobile apps or websites that feedback energy usage information. All of these modern smart metering tools and devices share a common assumption: that by enabling the monitoring of domestic energy consumption, people will better understand their consumption and so learn to manage their usage better, save money, and reduce emissions
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