Thomas Erickson
Ming Li
Younghun Kim
ABSTRACT
This paper describes the Dubuque Electricity Portal, a city-scale system aimed at supporting voluntary reductions of electricity consumption. The Portal provided each household with fine-grained feedback on its electricity use, as well as using incentives, comparisons, and goal setting to encourage conservation. Logs, a survey and interviews were used to evaluate the user experience of the Portal during a 20-week pilot with 765 volunteer households. Although the volunteers had already made a wide range of changes to conserve electricity prior to the pilot, those who used the Portal decreased their electricity use by about 3.7%. They also reported increased understanding of their usage, and reported taking an array of actions - both changing their behavior and their electricity infrastructure. The paper discusses the experience of the system's users, and describes challenges for the design of ECF systems, including balancing accessibility and security, a preference for time-based visualizations, and the advisability of multiple modes of feedback, incentives and information presentation.
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Index Terms
- The dubuque electricity portal: evaluation of a city-scale residential electricity consumption feedback system
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Reviews
Joao Orvalho
The smart city movement is a very important research drive nowadays and the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) has much to contribute in “electricity consumption feedback research (ECF).” This paper describes a very important project in the city of Dubuque, the Dubuque 2.0 NGO, where 756 households participated in a pilot study. Logs, a survey, and interviews were used to evaluate the Dubuque electricity portal, a system aimed at supporting voluntary reductions of electricity consumption. In this very important paper, readers can study and be aware of the several angles to observe in a challenge, that is, the reduction of CO2: “In our view, the most likely instigator for radical changes in consumption will be either crises or prices, most likely both. In this case some form of ECF will be a necessary part of the solution.” What do they mean__?__ “Individuals will still need to understand their consumption, and be able to view it in the context of achieving societal goals (e.g., avoiding rolling brownouts) or avoiding individual penalties (e.g., triggering higher prices in a tiered energy pricing regime).” This case study is quite important and should be replicated in other cities. It will attract volunteers to similar studies and encourage energy conservation. Online Computing Reviews Service
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