Print Email Facebook Twitter Empowering end-users in the energy transition: An exploration of products and services to support changes in household energy management Title Empowering end-users in the energy transition: An exploration of products and services to support changes in household energy management Author Geelen, D.V. Contributor Reinders, A.H.M.E. (promotor) Keyson, D.V. (promotor) Faculty Industrial Design Engineering Department Design Engineering / Design for Sustainability Date 2014-09-19 Abstract Current discourse on smart grid deployment expects residential end users to play a more active role as co-providers in the electric power system. Their electricity consumption and production is considered a resource for balancing supply and demand in an electric power system with distributed generation. This means that, in addition to using energy efficiently, they, for example, have to adjust their consumption patterns to the production patterns of locally available and intermittent energy generation. This thesis explores how the technological and social contexts of smart grids can shape the role of residential end-users as co-providers in the electric power system. The main objective was to formulate implications for the development of products and services that support end-users in taking up a co-provider role. The research involved a literature review about currently applied smart grid technologies and field studies of two pilot projects in which households were equipped with smart energy technology: Energy Battle and PowerMatching City. Both cases concern the implementation of a product-service combination that was new for the household and that was aimed at enabling one or more aspects of co-providing end-user behavior. End-users’ experiences in using the implemented system were central to the research in each case. The research resulted in design implications within four themes: (1) Design of the user interface, (2) Design in relation to the social context at household and community level, (3) Integral design approach to address behavioral and technical aspects of smart energy system performance, and (4) Design of products and services as part of an experiential learning process for both developers and end-users. Subject household energy consumptionsmart gridsgamingsocial interaction To reference this document use: https://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:898f5aaf-b6af-4913-9ca0-7f8dccd151d1 ISBN 9789461863577 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type doctoral thesis Rights (c) 2014 Geelen, D.V. Files PDF DaphneGeelen_ThesisBoek_D ... Versie.pdf 11.32 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:898f5aaf-b6af-4913-9ca0-7f8dccd151d1/datastream/OBJ/view