LArge Scale Energy SavingS

Sponsored by The U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Project Agency - Energy (ARPA-e)

 

OVERVIEW

Smart meters and related technologies promise that energy information will change energy use. Poorly designed interfaces, however, jeopardize billion dollar infrastructure investments because sensor information is complex and dull, incentives are inappropriate, interfaces are not designed to modify behavior, and social context is ignored. These problems all involve the intersection of human behavior and technology.


BACKGROUND

In 2010, Stanford won a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Project Agency – Energy (ARPA-e) to develop a transformative technology system that leverages pervasive sensor and communication technologies to achieve large-scale energy savings. 


IMPACT GOALS

The team has focused on reducing people's energy consumption and increasing energy literacy by designing behavior-change interventions. The initiative includes four parts:

  1. A software platform that enables behavioral programs to be implemented at scale
  2. Behavioral interventions to reduce and shift energy use
  3. Data modeling that incorporates behavior into prescriptive engineering and economic analyses
  4. An extensible energy communication network to enable future innovation
 

APPROACH

The team developed three human-centered, online, and residential energy reduction interfaces based on three motivational frames: 


  • Cognitive Feedback - A powerbar displays real-time home energy data to allow the user to form a more tangible understanding of his or her energy usage.
  • Affect-based Feedback - Kidogo, an affective app, leverages emotions to help users correlate electricity savings with saved money and donations.
  • Social - Splitbar, an interface, leverages a user's competitive spirit in social energy-savings contests, motivating a sense of community and energy-awareness.
 

These frames apply affective, cognitive, and social engagement in energy reduction. The multi-faceted approach originated from qualitative interviews with homeowners, who suggested that they did not understand drivers of electricity consumption, even though their motivations were to reduce it.


All three interfactes are currently being developed for the Facebook platform.  They began as iGoogle gadgets, but have been ported over to Facebook, where the user-base is larger and more varied.