Energy Life is a system utilizing wireless sensors, and a smartphone that turns energy consumers into active players. Energy Life participants play through different levels collecting scores in savings and through advice tip reading and quizzes. Key principles embodied in Energy Life are: situated and combined feedback including knowledge and consumption information, intuitiveness and non-intrusiveness by utilizing an always at hand solution on a touch enabled smartphone , sustained interaction and engagement by using a applied game that connects players within and between households.

BeAware is carrying out a Demo Tour of EnergyLife. Started at UbiComp 2010 September in Copenhagen , Energy Life was presented at the EIT ICT Labs open days in Helsinki Wednesday 13 April Otaniemi Open 2011 which gathered together almost 300 members of the EIT ICT Labs and the Otaniemi research community in an open spirit to network, hear the news from EIT ICT Labs and to share the latest research results of our core partners.

Next EnergyLife will be presented in EIT ICT Labs Partner Event, Wednesday, 29. June 2011, The event will be held in the Co-Location in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

Abstract: The EnergyLife mobile interface incorporates lessons from environmental psychology and feedback intervention to relay information from appliance sensors, offering a gaming environment that rewards users for decreased electricity consumption.

More information:

Full paper: http://users.tkk.fi/~giulio/eco-feedback.pdf, http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2011.125
Citation: Anna Spagnolli, Nicola Corradi, Luciano Gamberini, Eve Hoggan, Giulio Jacucci, Cecilia Katzeff, Loove Broms, Li Jönsson, “Eco-Feedback on the Go: Motivating Energy Awareness,” Computer, vol. 44, no. 5, pp. 38-45, Mar. 2011, doi:10.1109/MC.2011.125
BeAware project: energyawareness.eu

As part of academic and educational activities of BeSchool (summer school) BeAware organized  at the IEEE Pervasive conference a international workshop with a prominent organizing committee of scientists from Europe and Asia. The first workshop focussed on energy awareness and conservation that brings together excellence of research from Far East (Japan with the co-organisation of University of Waseda) and Nordic Europe. Workshop topics and objectives: Pervasive sensing of energy consumption. Energy efficient infrastructures for sensing energy and users. Pervasive interfaces including natural/ambient and mobile applications. Informed design of applications. The workshop is co-organised by the EU ICT BeAware Project, www.energyawareness.eu and Prof. Tatsuo Nakajima, Waseda University, Japan. The workshop

hosted 18 participants. Most of participants presented papers. Participants prepared 10 minute
presentation covering their work and read over the attached submissions before the workshop.
Contributions included submissions from PHD students and researchers in academia and
industry (ETH Zurich, SAP, Microsoft Research, University of Cyprus, The Open University,
Fachhochschule Bielefeld, Waseda University Japan, Fraunhofer Institute for
AppliedInformation Technology FIT, Department of Design, School of Art and Design, Aalto
University, Delft University of Technology). Most participants are couched for a longer journal
submission for a special issue in PsychNology Volume 9 Issue 1 2011.
http://207.210.83.249/psychnology/

Nordic Energy Outlook 2011, organized by the Swedish Energy Agency, is North Europe’s largest energy conference addressing and showcasing the latest findings and trends in the industry. Organizations and companies from the Nordic countries will meet for three monumental days to discuss everything energy-related and ways to become more environmentally friendly.

The conference last from March 15th until March 17th, at the Swedish Exhibition Centre in Gothenburg, Sweden.

The second BeAware trial with new families in Italy, Sweden and Finland is in progress. Users are experiencing the prototypes of EnergyLife and Watt-Lite:Twist since January, after being instructed on their use.

The BeAware research teams in each country are currently preparing the second round of visits to the users, for an initial evaluation of their experience with the system. The evaluation activities will include the submission of a satisfaction survey, along with the execution of some video-recorded usability tasks.

The second BeAware trial with new families in Italy, Sweden and Finland is in progress. Users are experiencing the prototypes of EnergyLife and Watt-Lite:Twist since January, after being instructed on their use. The BeAware research teams in each country are currently preparing the second round of visits to the users, for an initial evaluation of their experience with the system. The evaluation activities will include the submission of a satisfaction survey, along with the execution of some video-recorded usability tasks.

The project has just started the second trial of the developed prototypes Energy Life and Watt-lite: Twist. The prototypes are installed in real households; 5 in Italy, 5 in Sweden and 2 in Finland, and the families will use the prototypes during three months.

BeAware was exhibited at ICT 2010: Digitally Driven, 27-29 September in Brussels where a complete BeAware installation “at work” was shown to the visitors. The installation received an impressive amount of visitors, all of them leaving the stand with the highest appreciation for the project.

BeAware was presented at the Metering Europe conference, 22-24 September in Vienna, by Monica Löf (Vattenfall). The presentation described Energylife, as well as new work about the utility experience of Energy efficiency and smart metering. BeAware was also presented on the co-located Smart Homes conference. The presenter, Luciano Gamberini (University of Padova) and Massimo Bertoncini (Engineering) focused on the usability aspects in the energy conservation area. Many positive comments were received and the BeAware project was given a proposal to present at the next SH2011 in Amsterdam.

Mid term review meeting held in Catania

A BeAware mid-term review meeting was held in Catania, 26-27 October. The aim of the meeting with the reviewers was twofold, firstly to assess the status of the project in regard to the trials. Secondly, to let the reviewers’ visit one of the Italian households who participated in the first BeAware trial.

The demo at users’ site was successful, the reviewers had the opportunity to see the BeAware sensing platform installed in an actual existent house environment, as well as a working environment of EnergyLife in situ. They also got an opportunity to talk with the users and get a better understanding of their views and experience of being part of the project. Impressed by the degree of interest shown by the users the reviewers positively evaluated the level of involvement that the BeAware project was able to create in the households.

First round of BeAware trials in Italy and Finland are completed

September the 30th 2010 the first BeAware trial was completed involving 4 families in Italy and 4 in Finland who all participated for more than 4 months. The completed trial allowed the consortium to evaluate the first BeAware prototype – both the sensing platform and the EnergyLife application in real life environments.

The analysis of the data collected by the system during the trial, and the socio-cognitive evaluation carried out by the research team, have shown that the participants have improved their degree of awareness and changed their consumption habits thanks to the use of the EnergyLife application. It has been verified how the actual electricity consumption decreased during the trial period. The complete report including the results of the BeAware first trial in Finland and Italy is now available

Second BeAware trial starting

After the successful conclusion of the first trial the BeAware consortium is going to start the second trial phase including 5 families in Italy, 5 in Sweden and 2 in Finland. The installation will be completed by December 2010. However, the actual users’ experience will not start until the January 2011 when the BeAware research team will meet the new users for training and submission of the first evaluation questionnaires. For the moment the BeAware consortium proceeds with the design of a refined and improved prototype before they reach the users home. Together with the enhancements to the EnergyLife interface, closely related to the outcomes of the first trial phase, new interesting functionalities and elements will be available for the second trial. The new BeAware sensors and the new version of the ambient interface as well as smart advices, enhanced community features will be available for the 12 families.

The new ambient interface, Watt-lite Twist have the exterior shape of an over dimensioned torch and mimics the functionality of an egg timer. An egg timer is a device whose primary function is to measure a set amount of time. Rather than measuring time, the Watt-lite:twist is a tool for measuring set amount of energy (kWh). The engraved minute marks on an egg timer is here replaced with kWh marks in a projection. It proposes an alternative way of understanding the relationship between electricity use and the concept of kWh.

Latest reports

• D3.7 The Sensing Infrastructure
• D5.3 Intermediate Web Service Infrastructure
• D5.5 Public Summary of Service Models