C-tech

Creating the Energy for Change is a 5 year research project that is investigating innovative ways of dividing up and representing energy use in shared buildings so as to motivate occupants to save energy.

Providing energy feedback can be problematic in shared buildings and here we focus on workplaces, where many different people interact and share utilities and equipment within that building. It is often difficult to highlight who is responsible for energy used and difficult therefore to divide up related costs and motivate changes in energy usage. We propose to focus on these challenges and consider the opportunities that exist in engaging whole communities of people in reducing energy use.

Creating the Energy for Change is funded as part of the buildTEDDI programme of research projects funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

This project is multidisciplinary, drawing primarily on computer science skills of joining up data from different sources and in examining user interactions with technology, design skills of developing innovative and fun ways of representing data, and social science skills (sociology and psychology) in ensuring that displays are engaging, can motivate particular actions, and fit appropriately within the building environment and constraints. We will use a variety of methods making use of field deployments, user studies, ethnography, and small-scale surveys so as to evaluate ideas at every step.

We have divided the project into three key work packages: ‘Taking Ownership’ which will focus on responsibility for energy usage, ‘Putting it Together’ where we will put energy usage in context, and ‘People Power’ where we will focus on creating collective behaviour change.

A Final project report has now been published: c-tech final report

A full history of C-tech along with links to the project blog, outputs and resources can be found here.

For more information visit www.energyforchange.ac.uk

Partners: University of Southampton, Centre for Sustainable Energy

Test sites: Digital Catapult, Arup