Design and Evaluation of an Electricity Consumption Metering and Visualization System for Households

Kanae MATSUI, Yoshiki YAMAGATA Affiliation: Center for Global Environmental Research,

National Institute for Environmental Studies Email: matsui.kanae@nies.go.jp

Overview of this presentation

・Introduction ・Case study design ・Evaluation method ・Provided information ・System description - Data collection system - Information provision system ・Result - Quantitative results - Qualitative results - Scientific knowledge results ・Discussion ・Conclusion 1

Introduction

• To reduce electricity consumption in household, visualization of consumption is one of solutions to change people’s behavior toward electricity conservation from previous studies

• In this study, we developed a data collection system using sensor network and a visualized information provision system using websites

• To evaluate effects of information provision, these systems were installed to 30 household in the Tokyo and Kanagawa prefectures in Japan

• This presentation reported effects of the information provision from results of both quantitative and qualitative analyses

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Case study design (1)

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Method: To evaluate the effects of information provision, the case study had two phases: ・Baseline phase: - To collect not influenced data by the information provision - In this case, the intervention toward behavioral change of the electricity conservation indicated the information provision ・Intervention phase: - To collect influenced data by the information provision

Case study design (2)

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Participant： 30 households lived in the Tokyo and Kanagawa prefectures Period： May 3 – June 14, 2013 (about one month) Baseline phase: May 8 – 24, 2013 (15 days) Intervention phase: May 25 – June 8, 2013 (15 days)

Sending a package to each household

May 3 May 8 May24 / 25 June 8

Baseline phase Intervention phase

Open questionnaire webpage to each household

Evaluation method

・To evaluate the effects of information provision in the participants, this study did: Quantitative analysis： - Comparing electricity consumption data before and after users are provided with information to examine the influence on their behavioral changes Quantitative analysis： - Using a questionnaire to analyze participant's attitudes after receiving the information to examine the influence on their consciousness of their behavior 5

Quantitative analysis

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・To determine which behavioral changes occurred by compared between before and after the information provision

Before the information provision (Baseline)

After the information provision

Session

Behavioral changes can be seen

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ity c

onsu

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Quantitative analysis

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・Mechanism of behavioral change -To determine whether conscious change occurred, web-based questionnaire conducted among the participants

Awareness change

Behavioral change

Provided information

Websites viewed three types of information: 1)Total electricity consumption at one minutes interval - CO2 emissions, cost 2) Basic knowledge - Textbook based information e.g., how to read unites 3) Action plan - Five categories information (24 items) - Electricity appliance’s usage list (42 items)

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Information generation

1) Total electricity consumption - Processing sensed data collected by the data collection system 2) Basic knowledge 3) Action plan - Both information generated by previous studies knowledge Expected effects: ・Learning - why they change their behavior - how to read the information

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System description: Data collection part

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- Data collection function -- To install the sensor, which connected the communication network to a switchboard in a household -- To meter total electricity consumption at one-minute interval and send it to a central database

・The part had two function: data collection and processing part

System description: Information provisionpart

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• Information provides via the website - Electricity consumption information

Graph of electricity consumption information

System description: Information provisionpart

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• Information provides via the website - Electricity consumption information

Comparison graph of electricity consumption information

System description: Information provisionpart

• Information provides via the website - Basic knowledge information Basic knowledge information: textbook, for instance, how to read units, effects of society and environment

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System description: Information provisionpart

• Information provides via the website - Basic knowledge information

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Simulation tool for the participants to simulate which behavior makes how much electricity consumption

System description: Information provisionpart

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Social benefit

Your electricity consumption is high. If you reduce your consumption,

you can contribute to environmental friendliness.

These icons appeared according to the participant’s electricity consumption pattern

Encourage Environmental contribution

Warning Cost merit

• Information provides via the website - Action plan information

System description: Information provisionpart

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• Information provides via the website - Action plan information

Action plan information list

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Household 2

Times

kWh

線形 (kWh)

Result of quantitative analysis

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・The reduction of electricity consumption was able to see in 23 households

Before After

Example of reduction case

kWh Times

Linear approximation (kWh)

Times means how many times the participant watched the

website

Result of quantitative analysis

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・The reduction of electricity consumption was not able to see in 7 households Example of not reduction case

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Household 8

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線形 (kWh)

Before After kWh Times

Linear approximation (kWh)

Result of qualitative analysis ・To evaluate the participant’s conscious change, we asked 127 questions them. They had 7 scale from positive and negative. ・7 households were not able to see their conscious changes in 7 households

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Consciousness change Positive

Negative 19

Electricity reduction and conscious changes

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・Figure shows a matrix of the electricity reduction and the conscious changes in households

Positive Negative

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Electricity reduction

6 households (Household 4, 8, 11, 19, 26, 30)

1 households (Household 6)

22 households (Household 1-3, 7, 9, 10, 12-18, 20-

25, 27-29)

1) Positive / Positive - 22 households 2) Positive / Negative - 1 household 3) Negative / Negative - 6 households 4) Negative / Positive - 1 household 1 households

(Household 5)

Relationship of science knowledge

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・Investigation the relationship between scientific knowledge and the reduction of electricity consumption [1]

・Asking 10 items of science knowledge to the participants ・Found negative relationship between sciences knowledge and the reduction of electricity

y = -0.0477x + 7.8017

R² = 0.0246 0

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-5 0 5 10 15 20Electricity consumption change’s percentage

Corr

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Negative Positive

[1] Kahan, Dan M and Peters, Ellen and Wittlin, Maggie and et.al. "The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks" in Nature Climate Change, 2012.

Discussion ・Quantitative findings: - 76.6% of households changed their behaviors according to the comparison of the data ・Qualitative findings: - 76.6% of households changed their conscious according to the comparison of the data. 6 households matched negative results of both quantitative and qualitative analyses ・Science knowledge findings: -Our hypothesis that the people who have scientific knowledge tend not to reduce their electricity consumption was seen in this case study

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Conclusion

• In this study, visualization of nearly real-time electricity consumption was used toward electricity conservation

• We developed and installed the data collection system of electricity consumption and the visualization system to 30 households toward electricity conservation

• Both quantitative and qualitative results indicated

that our proposed information provision in this case study

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Thank you for your attention