A user centric approach to the development and testing of a home energy management system

The development and small scale field trial in Flanders of a home energy management system is presented. During the development, a user-centric approach was used to create interaction between developers and possible end-users in a living lab setting. This allowed actively addressing people’s needs and wants in the development process and testing the system in their homes. The preliminary results of the field trial indicate a high usage during the starting week, which gradually slows down over the weeks that follow. Usage of the different elements in the system varies over the weeks but a consistent “top 3” of elements remains. Dynamic pricing is used by a small but consistent part of the participants. They actively adapt their appliance usage to these prices

Introducing smart grids in residential contexts : consumers' perception of smart household appliances

A more energy efficient supply and demand in household settings is high on the agenda. Smart grids, smart meters, demand side management and smart appliances play a crucial role in this context. Many stakeholders are involved, but the exact role of the customer is often neglected. More specifically, his opinion, attitude, drivers or barriers towards new ways of energy consumption and energy management. This paper employs a user-centric perspective. It aims at mapping consumers perception of the possibilities of demand side management through smart household appliances. A quantitative survey was conducted among 500 households spread over Flanders, Belgium. In this paper, the results of this survey with regard to the respondents perception of smart appliances are presented. The Technology Acceptance Model was used as the theoretical framework to measure these perceptions

Measuring for knowledge: a data-driven research approach for e-Government

EGovernment still faces many challenges as it continues to develop. The current status of electronic services delivery opens up a lot of questions, both for practitioners and researchers. Therefore, further progress of eGovernment needs a profound knowledge base. EGovernment policy has focused several years on bringing online public services and on benchmarking their availability and sophistication. Simultaneously, eGovernment measurement activities are often based on the so-called supply-side benchmarking. This is important knowledge, however, it is under criticism because it lacks a user-centric viewpoint of eGovernment development. In this paper a bottom-up and data-driven approach is presented how research could help to manage (user-centric) eGovernment strategies. Based on statistical testing (techniques of Structural Equation Modeling, SEM) of large sample data from the Belgian government, we have investigated which relations do exist between contextual variables and the availability and/or satisfaction of electronic public services. This paper presents an illustration of this data-driven approach and explains how this can support and enrich the management and evaluation of eGovernment policy

Smart, smarter, smartest...: the consumer meets the smart electrical grid

In the current debate towards a more energy efficient supply and demand in household settings, notions such as smart grids, smart meters and smart appliances are of main importance. Different stakeholders are involved, but often neglected is the exact role of the customer, or more specific, his opinion, attitude, drivers or barriers towards these developments. As a consequence, this paper employs a user-centric perspective. It addresses issues such as the effect of giving personalized feedback on energy consumption and refers to studies that have been conducted concerning a possible future implementation of smart meters and smart appliances. Furthermore, it describes an innovative combination of different methodological techniques on the level of energy monitoring and user interrogation. This methodological set-up will allow to gain a clear insight in the willingness of consumers to accept different kinds of measures when it comes to smart metering and smart appliances in their daily life, as to have an efficient user adoption in the future