Persuasive Engagement: Exploiting lifestyle as a driving force to promote energy-aware use patterns and behaviours.

Electricity consumption has been rising significantly in the western world the last decades and this has affected the environment negatively. Efficient use and more energy conservative usage patterns could be ways to approach this problem. However, electricity has for a long time actively been hidden away and it is rarely thought of unless it ceases to exist. From the perspective of critical design, we have been working to find methods to visualise electricity and electricity consumption in everyday life to promote environmentally positive behavioural change. In this paper, we are looking at how aspects of lifestyles can be used in design as central driving forces that could lead to changed behaviour. Attempts to promote behavioural changes related to energy consumption might be successfully carried out when people are offered desirable alternatives that are engaging and that do not impose a perceived extra burden in their everyday life. This argument is exemplified through two design concepts, the AWARE Laundry Lamp and the Energy Plant, which are examples on how to increase people’s energy awareness and offer them means for reducing their energy consumption in the home. Both prototypes are inspired by current trends in lifestyle as well as actual observed user behaviour. Keywords: Interaction Design; Sustainable Design; Energy; Lifestyle; Persuasive Design</p

Home Energy Consumption Feedback: A User Survey

Buildings account for a relevant fraction of the energy consumed by a country, up to 20-40% of the yearly energy consumption. If only electricity is considered, the fraction is even bigger, reaching around 73% of the total electricity consumption, equally divided into residential and commercial dwellings. Building and Home Automation have a potential to profoundly impact current and future buildings' energy efficiency by informing users about their current consumption patterns, by suggesting more efficient behaviors, and by pro-actively changing/modifying user actions for reducing the associated energy wastes. In this paper we investigate the capability of an automated home to automatically, and timely, inform users about energy consumption, by harvesting opinions of residential inhabitants on energy feedback interfaces. We report here the results of an on-line survey, involving nearly a thousand participants, about feedback mechanisms suggested by the research community, with the goal of understanding what feedback is felt by home inhabitants easier to understand, more likely to be used, and more effective in promoting behavior changes. Contextually, we also collect and distill users' attitude towards in-home energy displays and their preferred locations, gathering useful insights on user-driven design of more effective in-home energy display

Global impacts of energy demand on the freshwater resources of nations

The growing geographic disconnect between consumption of goods, the extraction and processing of resources, and the environmental impacts associated with production activities makes it crucial to factor global trade into sustainability assessments. Using an empirically validated environmentally extended global trade model, we examine the relationship between two key resources underpinning economies and human well-being—energy and freshwater. A comparison of three energy sectors (petroleum, gas, and electricity) reveals that freshwater consumption associated with gas and electricity production is largely confined within the territorial boundaries where demand originates. This finding contrasts with petroleum, which exhibits a varying ratio of territorial to international freshwater consumption, depending on the origin of demand. For example, although the United States and China have similar demand associated with the petroleum sector, international freshwater consumption is three times higher for the former than the latter. Based on mapping patterns of freshwater consumption associated with energy sectors at subnational scales, our analysis also reveals concordance between pressure on freshwater resources associated with energy production and freshwater scarcity in a number of river basins globally. These energy-driven pressures on freshwater resources in areas distant from the origin of energy demand complicate the design of policy to ensure security of fresh water and energy supply. Although much of the debate around energy is focused on greenhouse gas emissions, our findings highlight the need to consider the full range of consequences of energy production when designing policy

Does Energy Consumption Respond to Price Shocks? Evidence from a Regression-Discontinuity Design

This paper exploits unique features of a recently introduced tariff schedule for natural gas in Buenos Aires to estimate the short-run impact of price shocks on residential energy utilization. The schedule induces a non-linear and nonmonotonic relationship between households’ accumulated consumption and unit prices, thus generating an exogenous source of variation in perceived prices, which is exploited in a regression-discontinuity design. The estimates reveal that a price increase in the utility bill received by consumers causes a substantial and prompt decline in gas consumption. Hence they suggest that policy interventions via the price mechanism, such as price caps and subsidies, are powerful instruments to influence residential energy utilization patterns, even within a short time span.Energy consumption, Elasticity of demand, Regulation of public utilities, Regression discontinuity design, Public policy

Conclusion

In spite of the technological advancement on building design and construction, actual energy use levels of dwellings are different than expected in several cases. Little is known about how occupants interact with their dwellings, what the background to this interaction is, as well as the resulting energy use. This research aimed at revealing the relationship between occupant behavior and energy consumption, both in terms of heating energy and electricity. The determinants of occupant behavior, the sensitivity of dwelling energy consumption to occupant behavior, and defining behavioral patterns/profiles are the main elements of this work. This thesis will help to understand the occupant related factors of energy consumption in dwellings, by this way designing better products, energy management systems, software, and achieving better regulations. Research on energy consumption of dwellings covers thorough investigation of the behavioral performance during the occupancy process, as well as the aspects that are involved in the design and building processes. There has been extensive progress on the building physics aspects of energy consumption; concerning methods and practices for specification of building geometry, material properties, and external conditions. However, the resolution of input information regarding occupant behavior is still rather low. In order to respond to this, one of the research questions of this thesis has been: what is the sensitivity of dwelling energy consumption to occupant behavior? Secondly, the influence of lighting and appliance use on electricity consumption, as well as the determinants of electricity consumption in dwellings, and lastly, the behavioral patterns of energy consumption are investigated. This study’s methodological approach combined the deductive and the inductive methods, by considering both the determinants of behavior and the actual behavior itself. Deductive methods dissect energy consumption into its factors, such as household characteristics, dwelling characteristics, behavioral aspects, etc. On the other hand, inductive methods model actual behavior from bottom up experimenting and validating energy consumption levels. In this thesis, occupant behavior was considered as presence patterns in a space, together with the actual heating (thermostat setting and radiator control) and ventilation patterns (operation of windows, grids, and mechanical systems), and the use of lighting and appliances. This research looked at the building and household characteristics that determine occupant behavior, as well as habitual (surveyed) and actual (monitored) occupant behavior

Modelling an Optimisation Selection Method for Buildings Design Toward Environmental & Economic Objectives

Improving the performance of buildings based on their energy consumption is a challenging task. The main contributing factor to the amount of energy a building consumes is associated with maintaining the satisfaction of the building’s users, by controlling the conditions within a building’s envelope. Two main design factors control the overall buildings energy performance, the Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system design and building envelope design. There are several studies aimed at finding optimum solutions, evaluating these factors individually. The researches focused on the HVAC system design, has limited number of variables going into it, comparing different systems, operation set ups and fuels. As for the researches focusing on the buildings’ envelop design, a large number of envelope’s design variables can influence the building’s energy consumption, such as its shape, geometry, material composition, elevation, and location, lead to different energy consumption rates. This research systematically investigates how three main building envelop design variables (Orientation, Aspect ratio/compactness and Window to Wall ratio) impact the overall building’s energy performance, including the potential of integrating sustainable energy generation systems, in search for optimum buildings designs than can achieve an environmental and economic balance. The first component is specific to the analyses of buildings’ energy performance/consumption, based on the three building’s envelop design variables. The energy performance considers different building geometries (from a square to a rectangular aspect ratio that is of length twice the width). Then, orienting those different forms at different directions. Further, varying the external walls composition at different window to wall ratios. The results are used to calculate the net yearly energy consumption rates and understand the patterns of energy consumption influenced by those three variables. All simulations are specific to the climate condition of Kuwait’s geolocation, to develop an informed perspective of the climate influence on energy patterns. The results obtained have unique patterns that do not particularly agree with the general conclusions cited by other researches, specific to the relationship between buildings compactness and the energy consumption. With the growing concerns of climate change effects on the environment, it’s no longer enough to aim for passive mitigation solutions by reducing the energy consumption. The goal is to push for active ways to generate energy using sustainable resources, when possible, in the most economically feasible way. Hence, the second component of this research, focused on the opportunities to utilise the envelope for energy generation. By integrating sustainable energy generation systems within the buildings’ façade, the dependency on the power from the grid, that is 10 mostly generated using fossil fuels, can be reduced. The climate characteristics of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries impose specific challenges on buildings’ energy performance as well as the efficiency of sustainable energy generation systems. Specific challenges such as the effect of dust on the most productive sustainable source for energy generation, solar photovoltaic systems, must be considered. Accordingly, a prediction model is created to quantify the regional effect of dust on the productivity of PV systems. Then, given the specific building variables used in the buildings’ energy consumption calculations, the energy generation potentials are calculated. The last component of this research aims to optimise the objectives of lower energy consumption rates, higher energy generation potentials (Lower emissions), and lower investment costs. A model is created to find optimum solutions that can balance those contradicting objectives. The results are obtained to provide guidance to the designers toward environmental and economic decisions, through a set of different possible design combinations

Investigating the effect of design patterns on energy consumption

Gang of Four (GoF) patterns are well-known best practices for the design of object-oriented systems. In this paper, we aim at empirically assessing their relationship to energy consumption, ie, a performance indicator that has recently attracted the attention of both researchers and practitioners. To achieve this goal, we investigate pattern-participating methods (ie, those that play a role within the pattern) and compare their energy consumption to the consumption of functionally equivalent alternative (nonpattern) solutions. We obtained the alternative solution by refactoring the pattern instances using well-known transformations (eg, replace polymorphism with conditional statements). The comparison is performed on 169 methods of 2 GoF patterns (namely, State/Strategy and Template Method), retrieved from 2 well-known open source projects. The results suggest that for the majority of cases the alternative design excels in terms of energy consumption. However, in some cases (eg, when the method is large in size or invokes many methods) the pattern solution presents similar or lower energy consumption. The outcome of our study can be useful to both researchers and practitioners, because we: (1) provide evidence on a possible negative effect of GoF patterns, and (2) can provide guidance on which cases the use of the pattern is not hurting energy consumption

Factors Affecting Patterns of Fast Food Consumption in Students of Medical Study Program Faculty of Medicine Tanjungpura University

Medical students who are in their late teens and are affected by high stress due to academic loads experience changes in nutritional intake behavior, namely changes in eating patterns with a tendency to consume fast food (fast food). The purpose of this study was to determine the factors that influence fast food consumption patterns in students of the Medical Study Program, Faculty of Medicine, Tanjungpura University. This study uses a type of observational analytic research with a cross-sectional design. This study used data on weight and height measurements, a 3x24-hour Food Record, and a questionnaire on 46 students of the Medical Study Program class of 2022. The results showed low consumption of calories, protein and carbohydrates, and high consumption of fat. The overall average intake of energy, fat and carbohydrates is normal, while protein intake is low. There is no effect of all variables on consumption of energy, protein, fat, carbohydrates, and nutritional status. However, action on fast food has a significant effect on energy consumption. Students often consume fast food which is processed by frying process. Low protein intake and high fat consumption indicate the need for education for food selection in reducing the negative impact on the health of medical students. Keywords: Fast food, medical students, consumption patterns, factor