IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Fall 2014 - 72

n the face of ongoing environmental concerns, there
is a strong push worldwide
to improve efficiencies
and curtail consumption
of energy. The European Union
(EU) has risen to these challenges
by announcing ambitious 20-2020 targets. These targets aim to
cut greenhouse gas emissions by
20% (in comparison to 1990 levels), increase the contribution of
renewables by 20% of the total
energy produced, and achieve 20%
improvement in energy efficiency
(reduce consumption by 20%), all
by the year 2020.
In order to achieve these objectives, the EU is engaging with a
multitude of stakeholders. Research
projects have also been funded with
the aim of identifying ways to reach
the time-targeted goals. Details of
the variety of projects funded by
the EU focusing on information
and communications technology
(ICT) for energy efficiency can be

out in the city of Bristol, U.K., and
highlight findings from this study.
Monitoring energy consumption in residential environments
dates back several decades. Hazas
et al. [3] provides an overview of
the developments in this field over
the last four decades. Hazas et al.
include research from various disciplines such as technology, economics, sociology, etc. They note
that, while the problem has been the
same, the motivation for addressing the problem has changed over
the decades, e.g., the oil crisis in
the 1970s, awareness of the impact
of energy use in the 1980s, global
warming in the 1990s, and finally
sustainable development in the
21st century. They also emphasize
the role of pervasive technology in
addressing this problem.
In the early days, there was a
lack of cheap, readily available,
general-purpose hardware, sensors,
and communications mechanisms.
This lack of resources resulted in

EU targets are to cut greenhouse
gas emissions by 20%, increase
renewable energy production by
20%, and reduce overall energy
consumption by 20% - all by the
year 2020.
found in [1]. While the thematic
area for all these projects is the
same, they focus on complementary areas. The Energy Efficient
e-Houses (3e-Houses) [2] project
is one of these projects funded by
the EU. This project aims to deploy
energy monitoring infrastructure
in residential environments. It is
executed by collecting fine-grained
energy consumption data, and
trial ICT interventions, in order
to reduce energy consumption
through pilot deployments in social
housing throughout several cities in
Europe. In this article we discuss in
particular the trial that was carried
72

the designing of an inexpensive
monitoring system. For instance,
Thomae et al. [4] devised a home
energy monitoring solution that was
motivated by the need to acquire
hourly energy consumption in order
to build load profiles to be fed to the
load management techniques. This
solution comprised of microprocessor based units, which collected
energy measurements from several
circuits in the house and recorded
this data onto inexpensive magnetic
tape cassettes on a monthly basis.
At the end of the month, the data
on the tapes was analyzed to compute average consumption profiles.

Lillevik [5] went a step further by
showing how a microprocessorbased unit, in combination with
thermistors and relay switches,
could be used to monitor ambient
and water temperature. He also
demonstrated how to control the
level of heating in order to conserve
energy and save money by reducing
the bill. Hunt et al. [6] elaborated
on a design wherein a master unit
could be plugged into any outlet
in the home and the appliances of
interest could be plugged into a
slave unit (similar to a Smart Plug
we see in the market today), which
in turn could be plugged into any
power outlet at home. The master
device could directly control the
slave devices by having the capability to remotely control, turn on/
off, the loads connected to the slave
device. The master-slave communication was achieved using a power
line carrier. The slaves also reported
consumption (in kWh) to the master
unit on-demand. The master unit also
housed a small display which displayed common parameters of interest such as time, temperature, energy
consumption, slave status, etc.
Exhibiting the parameters of interest
on an in-home display was something well ahead of its time, given it
was conceived in the late 1980s.
More recently, the combination
of cheap, off-the-shelf components,
low power consuming sensors, and
seamless networking of these sensors has fueled a lot of research,
prototypes, and products. Some of
the prominent products are highlighted in [3]. While these studies
have provided valuable insights in
the respective problems that they
have tried to address, our work
in the 3e-Houses project offers a
complementary perspective as we
have attempted to look at a variety
of issues, including technology and
user engagement.

The 3e-Houses Deployment
The 3e-Houses project received
funding from the EU's Seventh
Framework (FP7) program to install

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

FALL 2014

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