18 months of PEAKapp project

Introduction

PEAKapp – Personal Energy Administration Kiosk application: an ICT-ecosystem for Energy Savings through Behavioural Change, Flexible Tariffs and Fun- is a 3-year project co-funded by European Union´s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. 10 partners coming from Austria, the Netherlands, Turkey, Denmark, Germany, Spain and Estonia are joining forces to develop an unprecedented ICT ecosystem to reduce energy consumption of European households. The result is a smart phone and desktop application that connects to the household’s smart meter data feed, presents it to consumers in a supportive way and motivates them to get active. The energy saving ambitions of app users are fostered by the integrated serious game PEAKpoker that entertains and educates at the same time. The system is currently being tested for consumer validation while analysis of these tests are planned to be finished this year. The results of the PEAKapp project will be ready to be put on the market by the end of the project (first half 2019) with ready-to-sign agreements and are considered by the European Commission to have a potentially high impact. General information about the project and app functionalities are also presented in this PP presentation and flyer.

“Innovative and state-of the-art.”

European Commission in Review Report, 30 November 2017

PEAKapp project so far

The PEAKapp ecosystem is innovating GreenPocket´s existing energy management software consisting of a backend processing unit collecting, storing and processing household electricity consumption data and a frontend smart phone app allowing households to access different aggregates of their consumption data and benefit from related functionalities.  During the project runtime, the PEAKapp ecosystem is used by household customers of the participating energy retail companies. This means that the PEAKapp system had to undergo very careful pre-testing to avoid that households would have a discouraging experience with the app, potentially having a negative impact on the retailers’ public image. To satisfy the need for scrutinizing the app before it is released to a broader group of household customers, a number of “friendly users” have been provided with the app well ahead of its release date. These customers have tested the app for the duration of one week, and reported identified shortcomings to the developer team. Energy providers as well as ICT companies, consider PEAKapp as a great opportunity to develop and test new ICT solutions and products for better engaging end users in the energy transition, and so is the European Commission. Electricity as such is not a particularly interesting subject for end-users therefore a careful examination of physiological drivers was included in the project as well to develop key success indicators in terms of customer acceptance. The PEAKapp consortium came up with a solution and is proposing an innovative tool to drive continuous engagement and make use of Europe-wide smart meter installations – an user friendly energy administration platform.

PEAKapp consortium is not only developing but also testing an app which feeds from smart meter information, present it to consumers in an interesting way and engage consumers on their energy use, encouraging them to save energy and to shift their demand to times when energy prices are lower. 

Thanks to the work of project partner ENAMO , PEAKapp recruited more than 1500 households in Austria. The recruited households are existing customers of ENAMO who followed invitations sent out by email and paper letters. Recruiting in Latvia and Estonia is ongoing, while another 1000 households already joined the PEAKapp community.

In the advent of personal data abuse and security breaches, the partners made sure the recruiting process and the ICT ecosystem which serves as a window to personal and comparable energy consumption information, is guaranteeing highest levels of data protection.

UpperAustrianParticipants

Comprehensive testing of the app before its release is considered crucial for achieving a high level of customer acceptance. The procedures allowed the identification of minor issues possibly hampering the user experience. Consequently, these were addressed and resolved comprehensively to ensure an exciting and unproblematic application through the users. Since field tests are still running, conclusions of consumer validation are still to be made. As mentioned above, project partner TECNALIA elaborated on success indicators to achieve end-user energy reduction with an ICT tool and it was concluded there are three conditions required to trigger lasting behavioral change that results in countable energy savings, which are:

1. a high level of information and communication,
2. the provision of economic incentives,
3. and a supporting administrative framework, such as regulated static vs. dynamic energy prices.

PEAKapp was developed with these success indicators as guidelines which help to evaluate the performance of the ICT-to-human ecosystem, functionalities of system and functionalities of the serious game in order to measure consumer acceptance.  Measuring engagement in terms of changes in behaviour and enabling demand switching is a challenging task but the scientific (in terms of understanding the consumer reactions) and technological (in terms of communicating tariff information to enable demand shifting) potential for the project is promising.

Plans for market uptake

The overall goal of PEAKapp is to develop, validate and launch an ICT ecosystem that motivates and supports citizens to adopt and sustain behavioral changes for household energy consumption reduction. From the very beginning, PEAKapp focused on developing a solution that takes into account possible obstacles to market uptake. By improving existing solutions and not requiring any investments from the consumer (once they have a smart meter installed), the app itself can be adopted by electricity, gas and water utilities as a white-brand energy management system and offered to the end consumer as a customer loyalty tool. Pending positive technological and economic results, the business model development and other market uptake activities performed during the project lifetime are intended to successfully deliver the project innovations to defined markets. Potential clients such as energy retailers, distribution system operators, and vendors of smart home systems will be notified of PEAKapp´s functionalities (see B2B flyer) and the added value such as positioning as supporters of energy and personal savings opportunities will be communicated. The project consortium intends to intensify its dissemination efforts in year 2018 by attending relevant trade fairs, appearing at European Sustainable Energy Week 2018, establishing a market uptake acceleration board and partnerships with other relevant stakeholders such as EDSO for Smart Grid, Housing Europe and similar Horizon 2020 projects. By continuous intellectual property management and creation of agreements between partners, the road to market uptake aims to be well prepared.

PEAKapp aims to be positioned as a quality product and service offering clear social, monetary and environmental benefits for the customer, but also for the society. In times of a change in values and increased consumer awareness this is a high potential and growing market. Message: Save your money and the environment!

To foster PEAKapp’ market opportunities, it is actively communicated on social media accounts Facebook and Twitter as well and is looking for supporters who are motivated to promote the solution.

Are you a blogger or social media guru in the energy/smart home sector? Please contact us at povh@rtds-group.com. 

Conclusion

Energy utilities are looking for ways to engage their customers more into thinking about their energy usage and environmental footprint, and so is European Union. PEAKapp is working to prove that the best way to do that is through an intuitive and useful mobile application. The goal is to attract more customers to use our dynamic day-ahead spot priced contracts, help customers reduce their energy consumption and energy bill and increase their overall satisfaction. Through the research done, a market ready product aims to be developed whose specific features, quantitative effects, acceptance and costs have been field tested and validated. This will significantly reduce investment risk of the proposed ICT-based ecosystem and make buying decision-making process to be based on data and facts. Next phases in PEAKapp project are related to the quantative analysis of field test, business model finalisation, roll-out tool kit aimed at policy makers and performing activities that support reaching the most relevant stakeholders. Follow us to stay updated with our progress and upcoming events.

PEAKapp is surely one of the most promising projects with the potential to support a number of European policy objectives related to the climate, energy efficiency and electricity. With the dynamic tariff switching, the road to changing the energy market is open. And as the European Commission stated in its communication in year 2017, PEAKapp is one of the most relevant projects in energy saving http://www.peakapp.eu/peakapp-official-eu-news-article/ .

“We hope that participating in the PEAKapp project engage our customers more and provide valuable feedback for future energy savings projects.” 220 Energia

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