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Projects: Projects for Investigator
Reference Number	EP/K002708/1
Title	Aging Population Attitudes to Sensor Controlled Home Energy
Status	Completed
Energy Categories	Energy Efficiency(Residential and commercial) 100%;
Research Types	Basic and strategic applied research 50%; Applied Research and Development 50%;
Science and Technology Fields	SOCIAL SCIENCES (Sociology) 25%; ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Electrical and Electronic Engineering) 50%; ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Architecture and the Built Environment) 25%;
UKERC Cross Cutting Characterisation	Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Consumer attitudes and behaviour) 100%
Principal Investigator	Dr S (Stuart ) Galloway No email address given Electronic and Electrical Engineering University of Strathclyde
Award Type	Standard
Funding Source	EPSRC
Start Date	01 November 2012
End Date	30 April 2015
Duration	30 months
Total Grant Value	£603,327
Industrial Sectors	Energy
Region	Scotland
Programme	Digital Economy : Digital Economy, Energy : Energy
Investigators	Principal Investigator	Dr S (Stuart ) Galloway , Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde (99.990%)
	Other Investigator	Professor I Andonovic , Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde (0.001%) Dr V Stankovic , Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde (0.001%) Dr WC Michie , Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde (0.001%) Dr G H Walker , Sch of the Built Environment, Heriot-Watt University (0.001%) Dr EH Owens , Sch of the Built Environment, Heriot-Watt University (0.001%) Professor DW Corne , Sch of Mathematical and Computer Science, Heriot-Watt University (0.001%) Mr C Whittet , School of Design, Glasgow School of Art (0.001%) Dr G Hush , School of Design, Glasgow School of Art (0.001%) Ms C A Docherty , UNLISTED, Journey Associates Ltd (0.001%) Professor M (Michael ) Danson , Sch of Social Science, Heriot-Watt University (0.001%)
	Industrial Collaborator	Project Contact , Blacon Community Trust Ltd (0.000%) Project Contact , TreeGreen Ltd (0.000%) Project Contact , Remcon Environmental Control Ltd (0.000%) Project Contact , Open Grid Systems Ltd (0.000%) Project Contact , Dumfries and Galloway Housing Partnership (DGHP) (0.000%)
Web Site
Objectives
Abstract	It is generally accepted that energy saving measures whether at the individual building level or aggregated up to the community level need to be automated in order to maintain a sustained and consistent response to demand reduction. APAtSCHE proposes to look at the technical and social issues surrounding developing and deploying home automation technologies in social housing inhabited by senior citizens. The attitudes of this age group and their willingness to invest in and trust energy saving technology are very important given that the UK population is aging and that this demographic will come to dominate in years to come. These attitudes now and in the future will be shaped by experience, fuel costs as a proportion of domestic budget and established technology prejudices, which APAtSCHE intends to study through monitoring the engagement of novel technology with homeowners.Rising energy prices in the UK have stemmed from shrinking domestic generation capacity, increased reliance on imports and increasing fossil fuel costs along with associated levies; these price rises are passed onto the consumer through energy retailers who face these through an increase in wholesale energy prices. As a consequence, fuel poverty is becoming a real threat to a larger sector of UK society as many household economies are dominated by their energy budgets. How this will increase in the coming years will form part of a study in APAtSCHE used to inform hardware trials of the potential usefulness of energy savings.While domestic energy use is a function of the structure and form of the housing stock, the people who live in the housing drive the demands for energy and by their nature, people exhibit autonomous traits that are governed by their routines. APAtSCHE proposes that a combination of occupancy sensing, self learning environmental monitoring and informative control interfaces has the potential to not only constrain variation in domestic load, but provide the necessary information to quantify its changes with respect to the deployed technology.Presently, the opaque nature of energy consumption is cited as a reason for household inefficiencies as behaviour cannot be related to energy use, while loss of control was often cited as a key concern of domestic energy customers in qualitative studies of energy use. Technologies which highlight constituent elements of the overall domestic load and map these to actual activities of the householder could be seen as a vital bridging step in establishing trust in home automation. Identifying room utilization or occupancy and apportioning its load contribution to an overall meter reading would allow activities in the home to be mapped to a particular level of energy consumption. An existing product, the Energy EGG, already available to the public, forms the hardware basis of this area of research - this uses motion sensing technology to detect when a room is empty and switches off appliances using its patent pending technology which differentiates between a user sitting still and an empty room before it switches appliances off. Giving homeowners the option of allowing loads to be switched off automatically when they are not in the property or in part of the property, can produce a cost saving with no additional effort on their part. One research stream in APAtSCHE is dedicated to improving the measurement of occupancy, studying occupancy variability and quantifying the cost benefit of automating domestic loads on the basis of occupancy. Unifying sensor data with the predicates of household activity and appliance control requires data interchange standards for automated storing, assimilation and analysis which will be developed by APAtSCHE by extending current industry standards, to provide appropriate visualization for automated control development and intuitive and habit forming cues for understanding where and how much energy is being used without it becoming an overhead on householders' daily routine
Publications	(none)
Final Report	(none)
Added to Database	19/11/12