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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FEEdBACk (Fostering Energy Efficiency and BehAvioural Change through ICT)

Teaser

Summary

The objectives of the FEEdBACk project are to develop, integrate and trial a wide range of energy focused ICT and behaviour modification applications, that will be used to engage energy users and permit them to understand and change their energy consumption related behaviour in three different built environments (Office/Research Labs, Schools, Domestic smart homes) in three climatic settings (northern Portugal, Mediterranean Spain, and northern Germany). The consortium, from seven EU countries, that has been assembled to deliver FEEdBACk consists of highly experienced research organisations in the energy area; three SMEs that specialise in e-learning digital communication applications targeted at behaviour change and in building energy data gathering and representation to managers and users; and three organisations that own and manage buildings, schools and public and private dwellings, who are committed to lowering and making more sustainable their energy use. The development of this broad spectrum of energy related applications and the utilisation of next generation gamification techniques, tested in such a wide range of built environments has not been attempted before. The outputs from the project will enable accelerated commercialisation, by a wide range of innovative SMEs, within and outside the project consortium, of the tools that will help building owners and stakeholders to understand and reduce their energy consumption. The demonstration of the results of the FEEdBACK project will be valuable for Technical & Market planning for the EU energy industry. The FEEdBACKâ€™s ambition is to enable a wide range of companies to incorporate or integrate elements of the applications and the behaviour change components, thereby making their products more competitive and successful in the EU and on a global scale. This will contribute significantly to achieving important sustainable energy EU objectives.

Work performed

The FEEdBACk consortium prepared a very detailed survey to characterize motivational drives and user profiles (T2.1), environmental envelopes and segments of users (T2.2) and comfort and indoor air quality conditions and requirements (T2.3) in the three demos.

The development of the individual apps started as planned but were somewhat delayed due to some technical issues. However, they are now finalized, only pending some minor issues, in the majority related with design.

As described in the DoA, the individual apps were planned to work in two modes: stand-alone and integrated. In the stand-alone mode, the apps are integrated in a digital marketplace (T4.1) and run individually. In the integrated mode, the apps communicate between themselves, as required by the energy manager and by the gamification platform.

Regarding the demonstration activities of WP5, the demosâ€™ setup (T5.1) begun as soon as the project started. The first assignment was related with the usersâ€™ recruitment through the informed consent form. Afterwards, it started the phase of preparing the buildings, namely the installation of smart meters and of sensors for temperature, humidity, CO2 and luminosity.

The selection of sensors was not an easy task. The solutions available in the market that covered temperature, humidity, CO2 and luminosity were limited and quite expensive. This led the consortium to opt for developing a new multi-sensor. The initial development of the multi-sensor went with no significant delays. However, some issues arose when the consortium passed to the mass production.

Concerning the baseline creation, the consortium developed and tested all the algorithms related with electricity consumption and have them ready to be implemented. However, the situation is different concerning indoor air quality and comfort levels. As the sensors only started to be installed in Month 21, the historical dataset is now being created and it still does not have sufficient size to be used to establish reliable baselines.

In terms of project management (WP1), several consortium meetings have been regularly held (both in physical meetings and through telcos) to discuss the most relevant issues. Regarding dissemination and communication, the FEEdbACk consortium has done significant work and been successful in promoting the outcomes of the project, featuring more than 40 news pieces and being present in the most relevant social media platforms.

Concerning exploitation, the consortium has required the services from the EC on the Exploitation Strategy Seminars (ESS) from the EC. The FEEdBACk consortium also applied for the second stage of this service that is expected to take place during the first trimester of 2020.

Final results

The primary ambition of FEEdBACk is to demonstrate how ICT-based tools can be used to engender and promote building usersâ€™ behavioural change towards energy efficiency and enable new business models for interested stakeholders.

In terms of the progress beyond the state of the art, the project already achieved the following:

Occupancy forecasting application: FEEdBACk uses a very limited set of sensors and a predictive model to infer human activities in buildings of various types against the analysis/fitting of electric load curves.

Motivational drives and user profiles: User profiles are comprehensively characterized and defined across the three different demonstration segments, using motivational driver analysis and enabling the development of targeted applications that will trigger engagement and reward positive behavioural change that delivers enhanced and persistent energy savings.

Environmental envelopes and segmentation: FEEdBACk assesses various environmental envelopes in the demonstration sites, defining the user profiles into segmentation clusters. This enables the analysis and characterization of the most relevant environmental envelopes in terms of how they affect and are affected by the end user profiles.

Load disaggregation application: FEEdBACk uses statistical and machine learning approaches to extract appliance level energy consumption profiles from an aggregate building (residential and tertiary) energy measurement.

Behaviour predictor application: FEEdBACk uses a system that enables a statistical analysis to predict the acceptance rate of behavioural triggers devised to stimulate and reinforce lower energy consumption. Hence, energy users can be continuously monitored and automatically driven to positively change their behaviour, creating a snowball effect and delivering overall well-being as well as reduced costs and environmental benefits.

Gamification engine: FEEdBACk uses new interactive techniques which bring together optimised format and content design to engage users fully on their â€œreal lifeâ€ energy use journey, with dramatized portrayal of typical and preferred energy usersâ€™ behaviour to ensure that they can affiliate with better practice, to which they can subscribe, to reach reward goals that are meaningful and will sustain lower energy use behaviour.

Until the end of the project, the following results are expected to be obtained, as described in section 2.1.1 of the DoA: Considerable energy efficiency gains in the three demos; an energy manager application that will merge automation features with social engagement though gamification and behaviour modification; improvements in indoor air quality and personal health.