Engaging beyond the meter: Encouraging residential energy management using smart grid tools

With scientists around the world indicating a brief window of opportunity for reducing irreversible climate change impacts, the time has never been more pressing for sustainability transitions (IPCC, 2018). The role of energy is especially important in these developments, where anthropogenic forces have created a “… twin energy and climate nexus,” (Van De Graaf, 2013, p. 42) as a result of the extraction, production, and consumption of energy resources. At a global scale, 78% of human-induced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are from energy production and consumption (Natural Resources Canada, 2018a). Therefore, clean energy developments are an essential element of international climate goals. A key element of clean energy developments is energy conservation and demand management. With Canada having one of the world’s largest per capita electricity consumption rates, increased end-use management is essential to reduce system-level pressures within clean energy developments (International Energy Agency, 2018). Significant opportunities for electricity management exist in the residential sector, which contributes to 27% of international electricity consumption (International Energy Agency, 2017). This is especially the case in Canada, where the residential sector contributes to 34% of national electricity use, emitting 21.4 Mt of CO2e (Natural Resources Canada, 2019b, 2019a). Therefore, there is a strong need to transform Canada’s residential consumption management and practices to benefit national climate change objectives. Technological innovations in the modern energy grid deliver new opportunities for clean energy developments. Specifically, the smart grid creates two-way flows of both data and energy, thereby transforming technological capabilities and end-user roles. Beginning in 2004, the Province of Ontario facilitated large-scale smart metering implementation to enable a ‘conservation culture,’ consequently, becoming a prominent testing ground for residential smart grid development. Although the smart grid offers new technological potential, investigating ‘beyond’ the meter and into end-user engagement is critical for making these large-scale shifts. Social science research applications have previously remained underrepresented in energy literature and deliver novel opportunities for studying smart grid engagement. The holistic and scalable energy cultures framework presents a comprehensive approach to study the complexity of residential energy management, with substantial opportunities for applications in smart grid research (Stephenson et al., 2010). This dissertation, entitled ‘Engaging beyond the meter: Encouraging residential energy management using smart grid tools,’ delivers novel contributions to residential smart grid and engagement research for developing insights on household engagement and energy management. Drawing from the literatures on smart grid interventions, social science energy research, and consumer engagement, this dissertation utilizes two Ontario residential smart grid case studies to assess the potential of smart grid technologies to facilitate consumption changes. Additionally, this dissertation incorporates a comprehensive review of existing approaches for intervention design and proposes a novel integrated engagement model for shifting consumer cultures towards sustainability. This dissertation research is presented in four distinct yet interrelated manuscripts. Chapter 4 investigates the impacts of smart grid interventions on household energy cultures during a multi-year residential smart grid case study, following participant interviews. The energy cultures framework is applied to identify the nuances surrounding household energy management, specifically the changes in norms, practices, and materials. Additionally, qualitative feedback on the effectiveness of these smart grid engagement mechanisms for household energy management is collected. The results identify the challenges surrounding household energy management in relation to smart grid developments and present a novel application of the energy cultures framework within the Canadian residential smart grid. Chapter 5 further examines the impact of two smart grid interventions (electricity report and mobile tablet) to re-engage consumers over the multi-year residential smart grid project. This study examines whole-house and appliance-level consumption data alongside participant interviews. As a result, this study determines whether re-engagement influenced consumption, highlights contributing energy management practices (e.g., cooking, laundry, entertaining, air conditioning, dishwashing), and determines underlying factors influencing energy management. Significant conservation and peak shifting in laundry consumption were identified during a 10-week autumn period. User experience interviews highlighted the preference for weekly reports over a tablet for re-engagement. Therefore, this chapter provides unique perspectives for long-term engagement and re-engagement in the smart grid for the promotion of lasting residential energy management. Chapter 6 assesses the influence of a large-scale introduction of in-home displays (IHDs) to central Ontario homes. Two years of hourly consumption data for IHD recipients (n=5274) are analyzed and compared to a control group (n=3020) to determine changes in conjunction with IHD feedback at population and cohort levels. Consumer segments incorporating behavioural (load-shape) and thermal consumption patterns were identified. Following an impact assessment, no significant impacts were experienced in the general population; however, specific consumer segments responded favourably by conservation or peak shifting. These notable segments only represented 12% of the IHD recipients and had evening peak and heating thermal consumption profiles. This study emphasizes the importance of effective program design that utilizes comprehensive datasets, user-centred approaches, consumer targeting, and multiple mechanisms extending ‘beyond feedback.’ This chapter also highlights opportunities for utilizing ‘big’ smart metering data to understand consumers and their energy practices using quantitative methods. Chapter 7 presents a novel model for intervention design for sustainability as an outcome of a conceptual review. The proposed ENGAAGGE model presents an integrated model for intervention design that bridges the limitations from the current disciplinary silos for collective change. The paper provides a comprehensive review of existing intervention approaches (social marketing, community based social marketing, social practice theory, and design thinking), highlights the key elements for intervention design, and proposes the ENGAAGGE model that incorporates the strengths of existing approaches, while addressing their respective limitations. Therefore, the outcomes of this chapter provide innovative opportunities for application in future research and practice for collective change. This dissertation research brings novel contributions to theory and practice. First, this research provides an innovative application of the energy cultures framework to the residential smart grid and delivers a new framing for a smart and sustainable energy culture. The holistic understanding developed from applying this framework delivers insights for household smart grid engagement applicable to future program design. Second, the IHD segmentation analysis extends research on smart grid-enabled feedback and consumer response by the combination of a large-scale cohort and consumer segmentation. The research outcomes deliver critical recommendations for future programming to include consumer targeting and user-centred design. Third, the longevity and mixed-methods approach of the EHMS study provides novel and detailed contributions to smart grid energy cultures and engagement research to test with broader audiences. These outcomes provide insights for consumer engagement for long-term engagement and re-engagement relevant for residential smart grid programming. Fourth, the conceptual review and integrated model presented in Chapter 7 bring critical contributions to the sustainability engagement literature and provide substantial opportunities for application in future research and practice. In conclusion, this dissertation research delivers novel contributions to smart grid research for engaging consumers beyond the meter

Lightweight Blockchain Framework for Location-aware Peer-to-Peer Energy Trading

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy trading can facilitate integration of a large number of small-scale producers and consumers into energy markets. Decentralized management of these new market participants is challenging in terms of market settlement, participant reputation and consideration of grid constraints. This paper proposes a blockchain-enabled framework for P2P energy trading among producer and consumer agents in a smart grid. A fully decentralized market settlement mechanism is designed, which does not rely on a centralized entity to settle the market and encourages producers and consumers to negotiate on energy trading with their nearby agents truthfully. To this end, the electrical distance of agents is considered in the pricing mechanism to encourage agents to trade with their neighboring agents. In addition, a reputation factor is considered for each agent, reflecting its past performance in delivering the committed energy. Before starting the negotiation, agents select their trading partners based on their preferences over the reputation and proximity of the trading partners. An Anonymous Proof of Location (A-PoL) algorithm is proposed that allows agents to prove their location without revealing their real identity. The practicality of the proposed framework is illustrated through several case studies, and its security and privacy are analyzed in detail

Architectures for smart end-user services in the power grid

Abstract-The increase of distributed renewable electricity generators, such as solar cells and wind turbines, requires a new energy management system. These distributed generators introduce bidirectional energy flows in the low-voltage power grid, requiring novel coordination mechanisms to balance local supply and demand. Closed solutions exist for energy management on the level of individual homes. However, no service architectures have been defined that allow the growing number of end-users to interact with the other power consumers and generators and to get involved in more rational energy consumption patterns using intuitive applications. We therefore present a common service architecture that allows houses with renewable energy generation and smart energy devices to plug into a distributed energy management system, integrated with the public power grid. Next to the technical details, we focus on the usability aspects of the end-user applications in order to contribute to high service adoption and optimal user involvement. The presented architecture facilitates end-users to reduce net energy consumption, enables power grid providers to better balance supply and demand, and allows new actors to join with new services. We present a novel simulator that allows to evaluate both the power grid and data communication aspects, and illustrate a 22% reduction of the peak load by deploying a central coordinator inside the home gateway of an end-user

Scenarios for the development of smart grids in the UK: literature review

Smart grids are expected to play a central role in any transition to a low-carbon energy future, and much research is currently underway on practically every area of smart grids. However, it is evident that even basic aspects such as theoretical and operational definitions, are yet to be agreed upon and be clearly defined. Some aspects (efficient management of supply, including intermittent supply, two-way communication between the producer and user of electricity, use of IT technology to respond to and manage demand, and ensuring safe and secure electricity distribution) are more commonly accepted than others (such as smart meters) in defining what comprises a smart grid. It is clear that smart grid developments enjoy political and financial support both at UK and EU levels, and from the majority of related industries. The reasons for this vary and include the hope that smart grids will facilitate the achievement of carbon reduction targets, create new employment opportunities, and reduce costs relevant to energy generation (fewer power stations) and distribution (fewer losses and better stability). However, smart grid development depends on additional factors, beyond the energy industry. These relate to issues of public acceptability of relevant technologies and associated risks (e.g. data safety, privacy, cyber security), pricing, competition, and regulation; implying the involvement of a wide range of players such as the industry, regulators and consumers. The above constitute a complex set of variables and actors, and interactions between them. In order to best explore ways of possible deployment of smart grids, the use of scenarios is most adequate, as they can incorporate several parameters and variables into a coherent storyline. Scenarios have been previously used in the context of smart grids, but have traditionally focused on factors such as economic growth or policy evolution. Important additional socio-technical aspects of smart grids emerge from the literature review in this report and therefore need to be incorporated in our scenarios. These can be grouped into four (interlinked) main categories: supply side aspects, demand side aspects, policy and regulation, and technical aspects.

Privacy In The Smart Grid: An Information Flow Analysis

Project Final Report prepared for CIEE and California Energy Commissio

Smart Grid Communications: Overview of Research Challenges, Solutions, and Standardization Activities

Optimization of energy consumption in future intelligent energy networks (or Smart Grids) will be based on grid-integrated near-real-time communications between various grid elements in generation, transmission, distribution and loads. This paper discusses some of the challenges and opportunities of communications research in the areas of smart grid and smart metering. In particular, we focus on some of the key communications challenges for realizing interoperable and future-proof smart grid/metering networks, smart grid security and privacy, and how some of the existing networking technologies can be applied to energy management. Finally, we also discuss the coordinated standardization efforts in Europe to harmonize communications standards and protocols.Comment: To be published in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial

Intelligent Energy Optimization for User Intelligible Goals in Smart Home Environments

Intelligent management of energy consumption is one of the key issues for future energy distribution systems, smart buildings, and consumer appliances. The problem can be tackled both from the point of view of the utility provider, with the intelligence embedded in the smart grid, or from the point of view of the consumer, thanks to suitable local energy management systems (EMS). Conserving energy, however, should respect the user requirements regarding the desired state of the environment, therefore an EMS should constantly and intelligently find the balance between user requirements and energy saving. The paper proposes a solution to this problem, based on explicit high-level modeling of user intentions and automatic control of device states through the solution and optimization of a constrained Boolean satisfiability problem. The proposed approach has been integrated into a smart environment framework, and promising preliminary results are reporte

Scenarios for the development of smart grids in the UK: synthesis report

‘Smart grid’ is a catch-all term for the smart options that could transform the ways society produces, delivers and consumes energy, and potentially the way we conceive of these services. Delivering energy more intelligently will be fundamental to decarbonising the UK electricity system at least possible cost, while maintaining security and reliability of supply. Smarter energy delivery is expected to allow the integration of more low carbon technologies and to be much more cost effective than traditional methods, as well as contributing to economic growth by opening up new business and innovation opportunities. Innovating new options for energy system management could lead to cost savings of up to £10bn, even if low carbon technologies do not emerge. This saving will be much higher if UK renewable energy targets are achieved. Building on extensive expert feedback and input, this report describes four smart grid scenarios which consider how the UK’s electricity system might develop to 2050. The scenarios outline how political decisions, as well as those made in regulation, finance, technology, consumer and social behaviour, market design or response, might affect the decisions of other actors and limit or allow the availability of future options. The project aims to explore the degree of uncertainty around the current direction of the electricity system and the complex interactions of a whole host of factors that may lead to any one of a wide range of outcomes. Our addition to this discussion will help decision makers to understand the implications of possible actions and better plan for the future, whilst recognising that it may take any one of a number of forms