Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ChArGED (CleAnweb Gamified Energy Disaggregation)

Teaser

ChArGED addresses energy consumption in public buildings with a framework that facilitates achieving greater energy efficiency and reductions of wasted energy. It leverages IoT enabled, low-cost devices to improve energy disaggregation mechanisms that provide energy use and...

Summary

ChArGED addresses energy consumption in public buildings with a framework that facilitates achieving greater energy efficiency and reductions of wasted energy. It leverages IoT enabled, low-cost devices to improve energy disaggregation mechanisms that provide energy use and (consequently) wastage events at the device, area and end user level. These wastage are targeted by a gamified application that feeds personalized real-time recommendations to each individual end user.
ChArGED overall system incorporates:
(a) Multi- level energy disaggregation to be implemented using commercially available central energy smart meters, a few smart plugs, and large number of non-expensive sensors such as NFC tags (currently widely adopted) or the contactless BLE beacons on offices, appliances and power switches.
(b) Internet of Things (IoT) and OSGi technology to interconnect subsystems and remotely read the smart meters, smart plugs and NFC/BLE tags and smartphones. Thus every single office appliance and switch takes part into the ChArGED gamified system entity and all together in a complete and integrated solution.
(c) A gamified application for portable / mobile devices that:
● Implements novel concepts for attractive and engaging user-centred motivational paths towards efficient use of resources (i.e. appliances).
● provides personalized (monetary and non-monetary) motivation for participating players based on their progression in consuming resources efficiently.
(d) A weather forecasting component integrated with a solar micro-generation unit that will optimise scheduling -correlated with real-time and predicted levels of micro-generation- in order to lead end-users to use locally produced energy when available and to reduce consumption when most power comes from the grid.

The ChArGED solution was deployed and validated by about 75 real building users in three (3) countries (and about 270 visitors).

Based on the analysis of collected data during baseline establishment, energy saving opportunities at each pilot site that have been considered in the range of 5% to 20%,as pilot sites did no exhibit patterns of energy waste in the range of 30% of energy use, and the electrical devices targeted by the ChArGED system do not cover the entire building. The evaluation period proved energy consumption reduction of ~14% at DAEM, 6.7% at ICAEN and ~5% at MNHA. Overall, out of all targeted energy consumption at all sites, energy consumption reduction of 9.4% was achieved.
The evaluation results based on the users’ perceptions showed an improvement on the energy-saving profile of the pilot participants (the absolute improvement reached 9.61%). The maximum possible change reached 30.22% for average self-reported energy-saving behavior, and 24.13% for the intention to conserve energy at work. The pilot users expressed a high intention to continue using the Charged game towards conserving energy at work in the future. The most popular challenge played most by the users at DAEM & ICAEN was to use the stairs instead of the lift when coming/leaving to/from work (11,041 completed).

Work performed

Overall the the following achievements can be reported:
● End-user requirements methodology including on-site visits at all three pilot sites, as well as questionnaires and structured interviews to capture aspects of current practices of the (to be involved) personnel. This methodology was grounded on behavioral economics theory and well-established questionnaires, structured interviews, and an online questionnaire was defined to obtain feedback from the employees of each pilot site. During the on-site visits information was obtained for all pilots that concerned the building layouts and electrical wiring diagrams, photos of working spaces and other areas used by employees, electrical wiring, energy metering infrastructure and appliances etc.
● The design of the architecture and the subsystem components -along with their data communication mechanisms- has been performed where all the system modules have been repositioned and their implementation concepts have been designed to ensure the proper interconnection and integration possibilities.
● The game design has progressed with the definition of the game concept consisted of game epics, acceptance criteria, game challenges and mock-ups. The ChArGED gamification concept (approved via an anonymized questionnaire deployed at the 3 pilot sites, and external employees) represents a virtual living and evolving “Persona”, (a tree). This tree represents the effects of the energy consumption behaviour of the cumulative users in terms of each (and groups’) individual effect on all the energy consuming devices in their vicinity of operation.
● The ChArGED modules have been developed and integrated. Results included partial products to be individually commercialised: the integrated cloud backend and gamified mobile app, the Energy Management and Information System facilitating multi-level Energy Disaggregation and Energy analytics Engine, the OSGI reference architecture for Energy Efficiency, the Solar-powered micro-generation module,complemented by a weather forecast module.
● The pilot three pilot sites as references involving public employees and museum visitors.
● The significant results in energy savings and energy behaviour change. Overall the project has demonstrated energy savings between 5-14%.

Final results

ChArGED contributes to important directions in terms of the State-of-the-art by means of the game which aims to support and motivate the involvement of public workers in energy saving actions. It:
(a) employs gamification motivation paths on a collaborative level to act as a multiplier of individual energy efficiency efforts.
(b) extends the gamification paradigm to simultaneously apply to a multitude of 75 employees in 3 buildings, situated in 3 different countries, and develops gamification motivation paths applicable to every participant at a personalized as well as group level.
(c) aims at providing a very simple, light, non-obtrusive user experience to display important information in a very innovative way and integrating the concept of positive feedback, to engage the user in the long term.
(d) provides multi-level energy disaggregation based on low cost sensors and central smart meters.
(e) developes a software platform based on IoT technologies which communicates with a wide range of devices to monitor their consumption parameters.
(f) implements the visual presentation of the “healthy” condition of a living persona, depicted by a tree. The user’s actions are directly depicted on the tree’s condition, limiting the un-necessary information to the end-user whose primary task is to concentrate on his work-related obligations. The persona enables the user to experience relatedness potentially leading to increased interaction and engagement.
(g) facilitates energy saving by energy consumption anomaly detection engine and real-time feedback mechanism, and makes it easy to consume by non-expert users: issues are automatically discovered as they occur and energy saving recommendations are communicated to end-users for immediate action.
(h) correlates weather and load forecast to develop informed decision-making that will lead to optimum exploitation of the energy generated by a local micro-generation system.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.charged-project.eu.