Energy saving targets – tested in households in the Swedish largest electricity saving experiment

摘要

This paper presents the scientific evaluation of the results fromthe Swedish largest electricity saving experiment carried outduring one year (February 2012–January 2013).10,000 households from across the country, all of them customersof the grid company E.ON Sweden, have been involvedin the experiment to find out how much electricity could besaved if the households had continual feedback on the usageand, above all, if it was possible to obtain energy use relatedbehavioural changes in the households. At the beginning ofthe experiment, certain targets regarding expected electricitysavings, compared to the year before, were decided by the participants.Electricity consumption and the cost was visualisedvia real-time meters with so-called 100Koll displays. In an experimentalcomputer and smart phone application, the participantscould follow their electricity use visualized in differentways. Five special motivation-boosting actions were includedin the experiment. Facebook and the customers’ personal webpages on the company’s site were used as main communicationchannels. Scientific evaluation of the experiment includedboth quantitative and qualitative analyses of the households’behaviour and experience (via web-questionnaires and indepthinterviews). At the end of the experiment, the overalltemperature-corrected electricity saving was about 0.74 % forthe whole population, compared to 1.5 % rise of electricity usefor the control group. “Active households” as a whole saved1.71 % of power and those who saved power reached 8.43 %savings. Those who reached their targets within this “active”group saved 14.88 %. The participants declared that they hademade both technical and behavioural changes in their householdsthanks to the participation in the experiment. A majorityof the participants would like to keep the possibility of gettingenergy feedback. A half of households would be willing to payfor this type of energy service in the future.