IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Fall 2014 - 80

■■

roughly 2-5% of the average
daily household consumption,
with a small associated monetary
cost for the given demographic.
For those dwellings whose savings exceed the overhead, this is
well worth it. On the other hand,
for those dwellings that save little
or no energy, the overhead may
wipe out any savings. This calls
for further research to find ways
to reduce the overhead. A key
point to bear in mind is that the
cost of installation/maintenance
(mainly labor costs) far exceeded
any other costs.
As mentioned, new technology
generally captures the attention of users, but their interest
gradually fades over time. This
particular trend was confirmed
during the course of this study.
Subsequent to the introduction
of the tablet intervention, we
found that the participant's use
of interface declined over time,
reaching a steady level later on.
The period of time following the
introduction of the tablet resulted
in energy savings for a subset of
the dwellings. This indicates
that, while we did see some
behavior change, the degree
to which this happened varied
across dwellings, and depended
on the participant's attitudes and

■■

behavior. This resulted in some
dwellings saving a lot, with others hardly saving anything.
We found that trial participants
who were already conscious
of their energy usage actively
engaged in the community
workshops, unlike other trial
participants. This also seemed
to correlate with the anecdotal
experiences of the consortium
members, who actively engaged
with the interested participants
during the course of the project.
The low level of participation
in the community intervention
event could potentially be attributed to the demographics of
the population in this study. As
mentioned earlier, most of the
participants were of low-income
households. As low-income
consumers, they may have questioned whether they could effectively reduce their energy use
any more than they already have.

In summary, findings from this
trial are encouraging as they show that
energy savings can be achieved by
employing ICT based interventions.

Author Information
The authors are with the Telecommunications Research Laboratory, Toshiba
Research Europe Ltd., 32 Queen

Square, Bristol-BS1 4ND, U.K.;
emails: parag.kulkarni, tim.lewis, saraansh.dave@toshiba-trel.com.

Acknowledgment
The contributions of colleagues in
the 3e-Houses consortium and the
funding for this project received from
the EC are hereby acknowledged.

References

[1] "EU funded projects on ICT for energy
efficiency" Community Research and Development Service (CORDIS), http://cordis.
europa.eu/fp7/ict/sustainable-growth/energy_
en.html, accessed Aug. 2013.
[2] "Saving Energy and the Environment across Europe," 3E-Houses; http://
www.3ehouses.eu/, accessed, Aug. 2013.
[3] M. Hazas et al. "Look back before leaping forward: Four decades of domestic energy
inquiry," IEEE Pervasive Computing, vol. 10,
no. 1, pp. 13-19, Mar 2011.
[4] I. Thomae et al. "Residential load-survey
and analysis system," IEEE Trans. Power Apparatus and Systems, vol. PAS-100, no. 5, May
1981.
[5] S. Lillevik "Microcomputer instrumentation to reduce residential energy use," IEEE
Trans. Instrumentation and Measurement,
vol. IM-31, no. 3, Sept 1982.
[6] J. Hunt et al. "Electrical energy monitoring
and control system for the home," IEEE Trans.
Consumer Electronics, vol. CE-32, no. 3, Aug
1986.
[7] S. LeBlond et al. "3eHouses: A Smart
Metering Pilot in U.K. living labs," in Proc.
IEEE Innovative Smart Grid Technologies
Europe (ISGT-EU) Conf.(Berlin, Germany),
Oct. 2012.
[8] S. Delaere et al. "Business impact assessment of self-growing energy efficient systems," in Proc. Int. Conf. Mobile Business
(Delft, The Netherlands), June 2012.

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

FALL 2014

http://cordis http://www.europa.eu/fp7/ict/sustainable-growth/energy_ http://http:// http://www.3ehouses.eu/

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Fall 2014