Mona Prisa: A Tool for Behaviour Change in Renewable Energy Communities

Innovative construction projects, such as Energy Communities, are crucial to meet challenging climate objectives. However, currently residents of shared energy projects receive no feedback about the real-time consumption in the building and they cannot adjust their behaviour according to the needs of the community. In this paper we introduce the “Mona Prisa”, an interactive prototype dashboard with the looks of a painting at the entrance of a building which is part of an Energy Community. The design is based on the results from 51 interviews with 37 experts living or involved in an energy community and 14 non-experts. We question the level of openness of participants to energy behavior change and how this information should be visualized for a community, not on an individual level. We present the translation of these insights into a prototype with real-time energy, water and heat flows. The content is based on three important features of energy consumption feedback: awareness, action-based feedback and gamification. Interaction with the prototype is possible by infrared sensors and a camera for face detection. In this paper we focus on the design process and components of the product. We conclude with future development ideas.