787 research outputs found
A survey of recommender systems for energy efficiency in buildings: Principles, challenges and prospects
Recommender systems have significantly developed in recent years in parallel
with the witnessed advancements in both internet of things (IoT) and artificial
intelligence (AI) technologies. Accordingly, as a consequence of IoT and AI,
multiple forms of data are incorporated in these systems, e.g. social,
implicit, local and personal information, which can help in improving
recommender systems' performance and widen their applicability to traverse
different disciplines. On the other side, energy efficiency in the building
sector is becoming a hot research topic, in which recommender systems play a
major role by promoting energy saving behavior and reducing carbon emissions.
However, the deployment of the recommendation frameworks in buildings still
needs more investigations to identify the current challenges and issues, where
their solutions are the keys to enable the pervasiveness of research findings,
and therefore, ensure a large-scale adoption of this technology. Accordingly,
this paper presents, to the best of the authors' knowledge, the first timely
and comprehensive reference for energy-efficiency recommendation systems
through (i) surveying existing recommender systems for energy saving in
buildings; (ii) discussing their evolution; (iii) providing an original
taxonomy of these systems based on specified criteria, including the nature of
the recommender engine, its objective, computing platforms, evaluation metrics
and incentive measures; and (iv) conducting an in-depth, critical analysis to
identify their limitations and unsolved issues. The derived challenges and
areas of future implementation could effectively guide the energy research
community to improve the energy-efficiency in buildings and reduce the cost of
developed recommender systems-based solutions.Comment: 35 pages, 11 figures, 1 tabl
Energy advisors at work: charity work practices to support people in fuel poverty
We present an ethnographic study of energy advisors working for a charity that provides support, particularly to people in fuel poverty. Our fieldwork comprises detailed observations that reveal the collaborative, interactional work of energy advisors and clients during home visits, supplemented with interviews and a participatory design workshop with advisors. We identify opportunities for Ubicomp technologies that focus on supporting the work of the advisor, including complementing the collaborative advice giving in home visits, providing help remotely, and producing evidence in support of accounts of practices and building conditions useful for interactions with landlords, authorities and other third parties. We highlight six specific design challenges that relate the domestic fuel poverty setting to the wider Ubicomp literature. Our work echoes a shift in attention from energy use and the individual consumer, specifically to matters of advice work practices and the domestic fuel poverty setting, and to the discourse around inclusive Ubicomp technologies
Energy advisors at work: charity work practices to support people in fuel poverty
We present an ethnographic study of energy advisors working for a charity that provides support, particularly to people in fuel poverty. Our fieldwork comprises detailed observations that reveal the collaborative, interactional work of energy advisors and clients during home visits, supplemented with interviews and a participatory design workshop with advisors. We identify opportunities for Ubicomp technologies that focus on supporting the work of the advisor, including complementing the collaborative advice giving in home visits, providing help remotely, and producing evidence in support of accounts of practices and building conditions useful for interactions with landlords, authorities and other third parties. We highlight six specific design challenges that relate the domestic fuel poverty setting to the wider Ubicomp literature. Our work echoes a shift in attention from energy use and the individual consumer, specifically to matters of advice work practices and the domestic fuel poverty setting, and to the discourse around inclusive Ubicomp technologies
Exploring innovative community and household energy feedback approaches
Most research to date on the provision of energy feedback to households has focused on assessing the efficacy of numeric-based feedback. This paper describes the application and evaluation of more visual energy feedback techniques (carbon mapping, thermal imaging) at different scales, alongside traditional methods (web-based energy and environmental visualization platform, home energy reports) delivered through community workshops, home visits and the internet, across six low-carbon communities in the UK. Overall, most of the feedback approaches were able to engage and raise awareness amongst the householders. Whilst carbon mapping was felt to be aimed more at community groups and local councils by providing evidence of past and future community action, displaying carbon maps at community workshops helped to show that others were also engaged in energy action. Thermal imaging was successful in engaging individual local residents through both community workshops and home visits, especially when included in the home energy reports. This stimulated discussions on future energy savings through building fabric upgrade. However, the data-driven web-based platform had limited uptake due to online log-in requirement and information overload. Such insights are useful for those involved in scaling up the deployment of energy feedback to encourage energy demand reduction
Review of Serious Energy Games : Objectives, Approaches, Applications, Data Integration, and Performance Assessment
In recent years, serious energy games (SEGs) garnered increasing attention as an innovative and effective approach to tackling energy-related challenges. This review delves into the multifaceted landscape of SEG, specifically focusing on their wide-ranging applications in various contexts. The study investigates potential enhancements in user engagement achieved through integrating social connections, personalization, and data integration. Among the main challenges identified, previous studies overlooked the full potential of serious games in addressing emerging needs in energy systems, opting for oversimplified approaches. Further, these studies exhibit limited scalability and constrained generalizability, which poses challenges in applying their findings to larger energy systems and diverse scenarios. By incorporating lessons learned from prior experiences, this review aims to propel the development of SEG toward more innovative and impactful directions. It is firmly believed that positive behavior changes among individuals can be effectively encouraged by using SEG
Save Money or Feel Cozy?: A Field Experiment Evaluation of a Smart Thermostat that Learns Heating Preferences
We present the design of a fully autonomous smart thermostat that
supports end-users in managing their heating preferences in a realtime
pricing regime. The thermostat uses a machine learning algorithm
to learn how a user wants to trade off comfort versus cost. We
evaluate the thermostat in a field experiment in the UK involving 30
users over a period of 30 days. We make two main contributions.
First, we study whether our smart thermostat enables end-users to
handle real-time prices, and in particular, whether machine learning
can help them. We find that the users trust the system and that they
can successfully express their preferences; overall, the smart thermostat
enables the users to manage their heating given real-time prices.
Moreover, our machine learning-based thermostats outperform a
baseline without machine learning in terms of usability. Second,
we present a quantitative analysis of the users’ economic behavior,
including their reaction to price changes, their price sensitivity, and
their comfort-cost trade-offs. We find a wide variety regarding the
users’ willingness to make trade-offs. But in aggregate, the users’
settings enabled a large amount of demand response, reducing the
average energy consumption during peak hours by 38%
Green IS Design and Energy Conservation: An Empirical Investigation of Social Normative Feedback
A combination of information systems and socio-psychological concepts holds the potential to exert a positive influence on the energy consumption of individuals. In a field study among 9,929 users, we investigate whether descriptive and injunctive normative feedback lead to significant effects on energy demand if delivered by a website have the same effects as when delivered via personal interaction as in Schultz et al.’s (2007) study, and whether both feedback types have different effects on repeated voluntary system usage. We found a similar pattern with respect to energy consumption as did Schultz et al. (2007) based on personal interaction, and no difference with respect to frequency of system usage. The findings are important for the design of information systems that utilize feedback concepts to induce a sustainable energy usage among households. Ultimately, the results support utility companies and policy makers to cost-effectively meet regulatory saving targets
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