A first version of the energy-savings app was developed in a previous project, Social Power, and it allowed households to monitor their electricity consumption in real time, as it was linked to the smart meter of the house via the local utility. A demo of the Social Power app is available here.
Simple, lay-person visualisation connected actions and energy use, without the need for a more complex understanding of the energy system. Households were placed in teams, within whom they were invited to collaborate to collectively save a given amount of energy or to save more energy than a rival team (compared to their historical average consumption). To prompt households to energy-saving activities, each week the app launched electricity saving challenges, that were rewarded with points. Further, the app offered tips on saving energy which supported the weekly challenges, overall providing hands-on learning to support self-efficacy in changing behaviour.
The Social Power Plus app builds on the game mechanics and features characterizing the Social Power app, enriching it with elements related to heating consumption in households and with a detailed eco-feedback on energy consumption of household appliances, obtained through disaggregation algorithms fed by CLEMAP smart sensors as well as data analytics run on the CLEMAP cloud (CLEMAP provides IT infrastructure for the research project providing the non -intrusive appliance load monitoring electricity meter as all as the analytics and cloud infrastructure).
The full set of features of the Social Power Plus app was be developed in a living lab approach, through co-creation with interested households in the three partner regions.
You can learn more about the Social Power Plus app by looking at its Tutorial or watching the brief introductory video.