INTERACTIVE WEB-BASED GUIDELINE FOR THE EFFICIENCY OF

HOUSEHOLD ELECTRIC POWER CONSUMPTION

Merkebu Zenebe, Anssi Ahola, Matti Lehtonen

Dept. of Electrical Engineering
Aalto University School of Science and Technology, Espoo, Finland
{merkebu.degefa, anssi.ahola, matti.lehtonen}@tkk.fi

INTRODUCTION

The extent to which data analysis capability upgraded with installations of Automatic Meter
Reading (AMR) technologies is quite enormous. We have been studying the possible evaluation
of efficiency of individual households’ appliances from their hourly power consumptions. The
results were fairly reliable at least on the high power consuming domestic appliances level. Now
the utilization of available data will be lost in vain unless it is addressed to the respective
stakeholders properly. Customers require clear information on their energy bills, saving
potentials and comparative consumptions. In this study we will analyze possible incorporations
of personalized saving potential calculation results with the delivery of feedback to
householders.

In the discussions of feedbacks peoples’ behavioral responsiveness is quite an issue. In general,

people are skeptic on comparisons of their house with other similar homes (Roberts et al, 2003).
Rather, although it is often labor intensive and time consuming, personalized feedback leading to
tailoring intervention has good background. Tailoring gives the best suited feedbacks relevant to
the user (Benders et al, 2006). For this type of approach the need for detailed personal
information is vital. Feedbacks have five main categories according the literature review study of
University of Oxford (Darby S, 2006). To define clearly the approach used in this study, the list
of feedbacks with various degrees of immediacy and control by the energy user are given in
Table 1.

Table 1 Main categories of feedback [6]

Direct Indirect feedback Inadvertent Utility-controlled Energy audits

feedback feedback feedback
Available Raw data processed by learning by learning about the learning about the
on demand. the utility and sent out association customer ‘energy capital’ of
Learning by to customers. Community energy Utility-controlled a building
looking or Learning by reading conservation feedback via smart carried out on an
paying and reflecting projects such as meters, with a view informal basis by
Self-meter- More frequent bills the Dutch ‘Eco- to better load the consumer using
reading teams’. management freely available
software, eg
carbon calculators.

The attempted online calculator in this study is categorized in the energy audits feedback types.
With inputs from the user, a yearly electric energy consumption audit and personalized saving

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potential advices are generated. The following two features of the calculator are extracted after
investigation on literature reviews.

1. Personalized feedback based on user input information

2. Consideration of combinational effects of individual appliances

The user friendliness and attractiveness of the web page presentations should be appealing to the
user. Usually people prefer graphs and pictures than bunch of raw data. In this study we do not
discuss these issues of presentation formats but will put much more concern on the real
information to be computed and presented. From the preprocessing of data for evaluation of
factors to personalized computations of consumption and saving potentials, all could be handled
by utilities. The study aims to connect the data preprocessing phase to effective energy audits
feedback presentations.

Section 2 explains the evaluation of factors which led to the establishment of the online
calculator. In section 3 the web based application establishment process will be presented.
Section 4 evaluates reliability of information conveyed through the web based calculator taking
individual cases. The subsequent section discusses the results and concludes the study.

STUDY BACKGROUND

The purpose of this study is to build electric energy calculator using practical saving potentials
and factors evaluated from the AMR metered household consumptions. With this respect first
thing to do was to evaluate savings from real households grouped up on their differences. Much
focus was given on the combinational effects, for instance, for direct electric heated households
the savings of heat recovery systems incorporated with mechanical supply and exhaust
ventilation system. People usually want to see a comparison and saving recommendations either
compared with their past consumption or based on their current status than comparison with
other households. [7] Rather than just mentioning energy efficiency actions, specific actions with
reduction in cost of electric bill relevant to the user would be more effective.

Another issue is the dependency of efficiencies of appliances on the environment they are used.
Ground source heat pumps are excellent examples, where the coefficient of performance is
highly dependent to heating and cooling usages in a year. Therefore practical calculations by
local utilities from households with GSHPs in the neighborhoods would be much more trustable
than theoretical calculations or manufacturers’ datasheet. Now, the next issue is presenting these
saving potentials in a sensible way. We chose web-based interactive calculator. The online
calculator is more feasible than independent software because of their continuous updatability.
There is central role of electric utilities in updating the energy efficiency factors which are
subjected to change due to technological changes or other influences. The evaluated practical
efficiencies used in the calculator are shown in Table 2. These values were evaluated from the
data analysis of one year AMR metered consumption and statistical survey of Kajaani and Savo
areas of central Finland. The main idea is sharing this information for householders belonging in
the neighborhoods.

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Table 2 Electric energy saving potentials and factors used in the calculator
End-use type Action Saving/Factor evaluated
GSHP Replacing direct electric Saving of 27.45% to 47.0%
heating with GSHPs. of heating consumption
with direct electric heating.
ASHP Using ASHPs with direct Reduction in heating
electric heaters as consumption by 7.8% to
supportive heating. 25.6%.
Ventilation Incorporating heat recovery An average 13.6% saving of
system with Mechanical the total household power
supply and exhaust consumption.
ventilation.
Thermostat type Installing programmable An average saving of 14.7%
thermostat and applying from heating energy
energy star recommended consumption.
setting.
Thermostat Lowering indoor temperature An average saving of 3.43%
setting by 1 degree centigrade of total household
during heating season. consumption.
Standby load NA An average 46.2 W per
household
Energy saving Replacing every ILBs by Saving of 13.62% to 17.06%
lamp energy saving lamps. of total household electric
power consumption other
than heating.
Supportive Using wood as supportive Savings of 2.32 kWh in
heating heating. winter day consumption for
each m3 heating wood
burning in a year.

ESTABLISHING THE WEB-BASED APPLICATION

The personalized energy efficiency recommendation is possible after the user input some
information. Therefore, the online calculator accepts input and by using the practical factors
already evaluated, it will generate the yearly consumption profile of appliance groups and
specific measures to be taken with their calculated yearly savings. Appliances were grouped into
five main categories including heating and cooling, home electronics, kitchen, lighting and utility
and office equipment.

Simple HTML and JavaScript were used to build the webpage. The whole process as shown in
Figure 1 gives the central role to the service providers. The service provider would be
responsible to evaluate energy efficiency actions and their practical savings from continual local
survey data and AMR metered power consumptions. It then updates the calculation methods
based on the results of the analysis.

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 S
SERVICE PRO
OVIDER
PLC/radio GPRS/ADSL/WiMAX/Fla
ash-OFDM

AMR meters s, AMR inforrmation system

Conc
centrator
collector an
nd Network control
c system
m (NCS)
modem
Data analy
ysis

Uppdate energy
effficiency factorrs

User filled questionier

Perssonalized enerrgy
effic
ciency feedbac
ck

Figure 1 Web-baseed energy caalculator proocess layout

Most facctors in the calculation

c a in per sqquare meterrs of the houusehold. Thee most impoortant
are
input is therefore thhe heated arrea of the household
h f
from which heating andd ventilationn are
calculateed. Combinattional effectts, like the reeduction from heating consumption of direct eleectric
heated hoousehold forr certain m3 of
o wood burrnt in a year, are taken innto consideraation. For the rest
of appliaance groups the
t input infformation is straight forw ward, where quantity of the appliancce, its
wattage and
a usage peer day is filleed.

Figure 2 Snapshotss of calculattor web pagees

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EVALUATION OF THE CALCULATED VALUES

Three households were selected for comparison of calculator estimated consumption with the
actual electric energy consumption. The information needed in the calculator is partially
answered using the survey data we have for the respective households. Some additional
information was estimated based on related studies. Therefore, it seems more accurate
calculation can be achieved when the user him/herself inserts answers to the online questions.
Table 3 shows the basic profile of the households selected for our comparison.

Table 3 Basic profile of households based on survey data

Heated area Primary heating Supportive Ventilation

(sqm) heating
House#1 101-120 Direct electric ASHP + Wood Natural with range hood
House#2 121-150 Direct electric Wood MEV with heat recovery
House#3 151-200 GSHP Wood MEV with heat recovery
MEV (Mechanical Exhaust Ventilation)
ASHP & GSHP (Air and Ground Source Heat Pump)
30000
Yearly electric energy
consumption (kWh)

25000
20000
15000 Real
10000 Calculator
5000
0
House#1 House#2 House#3

Figure 3 Real vs Calculated yearly electric energy consumptions

There is indeed significant error on the calculated values but the fact that very personal and
unknown values like the usage time of microwave oven per day were estimated makes the errors
avoidable. Besides what matters most is the energy saving actions recommended in the report
page. In Table 4, the saving actions calculated are given for House#2.

Table 4 Personalized saving actions for House#2

Action  Saving 
(kWh/year) 
Using GSHPs instead of direct electric heaters  8973.45 
Installing programmable thermostat and follow energy star setting recommendation  1759.07 
Replacing all incandescent bulbs with energy saving lamps  930.75 
Lowering room temperature by one degree  410.45 
Unplugging unused appliances to prevent standby consumption  649.48 

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CONCLUSION

The electric energy efficiency analysis based on the AMR metered data is very effective in
finding energy saving loopholes and also evaluation of practical savings of the already known
efficiency actions. In this paper further utilization of the AMR data is explained for an increase
in awareness of efficiency. The method explained was generation of personalized energy saving
actions using localized factors evaluated from the exemplary households in the neighborhoods.

Effective and directed recommendations can be provided by analyzing personal input

information through the web-based calculator. Estimating actual electric energy consumption of
households is always in some margin of errors but when savings are calculated, effects of errors
are less relevant. Since the saving actions are quantified, hopefully, it initiates people for actions.
Once built, except for updating of factors, there is no need of follow-ups of the web-based
application.

REFERENCE

[1] Arvola A, Uutela A and Anttila U Billing feedback as means to encourage household
electricity conservation: A field experiment in Helsinki. Department of Social
Psychology, University of Helsinki, 1994
[2] Haakana M, Sillanpaa L and Talsi M (1997) The effect of feedback and focused advice
on household energy consumption. Proceedings, European Council for an Energy-
Efficient Economy, 1997.
[3] Benders RMJ, Kok R, Moll HC, Wiersma G and Noorman KJ (in press) New approaches
for household energy conservation. In search of personal household energy budgets and
energy reduction options. Energy Policy, 2006
[4] Roberts S and Baker W (2003) Towards effective energy information: improving
consumer feedback on energy consumption. A report to Ofgem. Centre for Sustainable
Energy, Bristol, 2003
[5] Ueno T, Inada R, Saeki O and Tsuji K (2005) Effectiveness of displaying energy
consumption data in residential houses. Analysis on how the residents respond.
Proceedings, European Council for an Energy-efficient Economy, paper 6.100
[6] Darby S (2006) The effectiveness of feedback on energy consumption.
A review for DEFRA of the literature on metering, billing and direct displays,
Environmental change institute, University of Oxford
[7] Roberts S. (May 2004) Consumer preferences for improving energy consumption
feedback, Report to Ofgem, Reference Contract no: Con/Spec/2004.2007, UK