Monitoring and reflecting energy consumption

In the last few years, a growing awareness has emerged on the impact that personal energy consumption has in the global levels of energy waste. Building on this trend, SmartMetering has focused on providing access to energy consumption data with increasing levels of granularity. In this position paper we show the results of a preliminary study of SmartMetering technology in different contexts of use. One repeating pattern observed in our studies was the relevance of the connection between metering data and usage habits. We argue that the efforts of SmartMetering are incomplete if they stop on data visualization without further supporting the aggregation and analysis of energy consumption data through the end-users embedded in everyday life contexts. To illustrate our ideas, we provide a set of design sketches that move the focus from energy consumption displays towards supporting the analysis of personal and social behavior patterns encoded in the metering data which are ultimately the source of energy consumption.