Three conditions are required to trigger lasting behavioral change that results in countable energy savings, which are:
- a high level of information and communication,
- the provision of economic incentives,
- and a supporting administrative framework, such as regulated static vs. dynamic energy prices.
With this in mind, this deliverable gathers:
- information related to the products/tools to be analysed in the PEAKapp context,
- the experience and knowledge of tools/products which influence energy consumption behavior,
- as well as lifestyle choices and products outside of the “energy world” which successfully achieved sustainable changes in consumers’ behavior.
D 1.2 Documentation of functionalities – system specification
The aim of this document is to describe functional specifications of the PEAKapp system. At the beginning of the project, the PEAKapp consortium defined fundamental guidelines for the development of the PEAKapp system’s functionalities and these are:
- to ensure a configuration that can best support lasting behavioral change in the context of energy efficiency,
- to take full advantage of the possibilities offered by the smart meter technology,
- to provide the backbone for future applications of innovative energy efficiency and engagement applications,
- to work without the need for costly additional in-home installations,
- can therefore be offered to any European household that is equipped with a smart meter,
- to be fully aligned with the requirements of Directives 2009/72/EC, 2009/73/EC and 2012/27/EC which request the roll-out of electricity smart meters to at least 80 % of European residential electricity consumers.
D 1.3 List of quantitative success indicators for the evaluation of the performance of the ICTto- Human ecosystem
This document deals with the question of how the app actually stimulates energy efficient behavior and related decisions of the households. Since PEAKapp project is collecting rather technical data, it must return the information to the households in a way that is engaging and motivating to increase energy efficiency. PEAKapp carries out field tests in four European countries and, thereby, provides important information for decision makers from utility companies, policy, consumer associations, and regional or federal energy planners, as well as other stakeholders. Indicators that measure the environmental impact of PEAKapp and how households’ energy consumption patterns are changing are the focus of this document and the chapters within describe these indicators in detail, as well as, the required data for their quantification and how to interpret them.
D 1.4 Documentation of functionalities – Serious Game specification
The PeakApp game invites players to be more conscious about their energy consumption and secondly to save energy and money.
Every day, players are invited to estimate their consumption as precise as possible by placing a bet,
- the lower these bets, the more points the player can earn,
- the player loses all points when his actual consumption for that day exceeds his bet,
- however in case that his actual consumption is lower than his bet, the player will get a chance to add the missing kWh by regulating virtual appliances,
- the closer the actual consumption is to the bet, the more points the player scores,
- the player is able to exchange these points for presents in the shop (utilities loyalty programme).
D 1.5 List of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the evaluation of the ICT’s impact
´´Is the developed tool prepared to serve millions of customers without a disproportionate number of technical incidents and without causing an energy consumption for the operation of the system devouring the triggered energy savings of the households? ´´is the main question behind field tests in four European countries. They are carried out to answer question and thereby provide important information for decision makers from energy companies, policy, consumer associations and regional or federal energy planners as well as other stakeholders. This document, produced within the PEAKapp project, considers quantitative Key Indicators for:
- Costumers and their satisfaction with the app, namely Active Users in a month, Average Session Durations, Average Number of Bets, Number of Downloads, Call-Center Calls;
- Business related, namely Recuring and Non-Recuring Costs.
Considering the differing technical preconditions and national legal/regulatory frameworks of the test sites, not all indicators can be provided for all sites. For example, in Austria figures about households’ electricity consumption are available in 15 minutes intervals, while Estonian regulation foresees metering of hourly values.
D 2.2 The Smart phone/tablet app
The PEAKapp developed by GreenPocket is able to trigger lasting energy savings through behavioral change and continuous engagement. The app enables:
- very precise information on electricity consumption and price,
- comparisons to other households´electricity consumption,
- motivating the users to save energy through serious gaming.
The energy management-software for residential customers is a first step in order to save energy and money and enables users to understand how much energy is used and what its costs are. This deliverable D.2.2 provides a detailed description of the Smart phone/tablet app.
D 3.1. Guidelines for Communication and Trouble Shooting
The smart phone app developed in the project PEAKapp is tested with approximately 2,000 European households. These households are customers of the participating electricity retaining companies ENAMO and 220E. A communication and trouble shooting strategy was developed to
- inform the households about the parameters of the field test and its purpose, and to
- provide the households guideance in case of any technical problems with the app or support in case evolvoing questions related to usability or interpretation of its content.
The communication and trouble shooting strategy consists of information provided directly through the app itself (see Chapter 3) and the provision of additional communication channels through email or telephone in case of issues that could not be resolved by the written material.
Together, customers are provided the information needed for operating the app and to resolve problems related to technical issues, difficulties to interpret the results, or even contractual issues.
Subsequent Chapter 2 details about the three levels of support via email and telephone, while Chapter 3 displays the in-app support materials.
NOTICE: Subsequent chapters display screenshots from the Austrian version of the app for practical reasons, however, the described trouble shooting and communication strategy is closely related to those of the other markets in PEAKapp.
D 3.2 Data Collection Guidebook
Within the framework of the ‘PEAKapp’ project, a software tool is developed which collects load profiles of households’ electricity consumption as well as data on the recruited individuals’ application usage behavior. The ‘PEAKapp’ project develops a software tool that collects load profiles of housholds’ electricity consumption as well as data on how the recruited individuals behave using the application. The aim of the project is to provide a user- friendly access to the energy consuming behavior of the individuals. In particular, the app should sensitize the participants to their energy consumption and hence foster energy savings due to energy saving measures.
In this deliverable, the focus will be set on the data acquisition process necessary to enable a comprehensive and holistic analysis. For this purpose, personal anonymized data is collected from various sources. The gathered data will then be analysed and evaluated in the field test as described in deliverables D1.3 and D1.5.
How will ethical issues be managed?
Personal data, which will be collected within this project, has to be accepted by the National Data Protection authority (for more details see Data Protection). The identity of the participants will be protected by anonymization of the data. The anonymization process guarantees that no particular individual can be identified. Statistics and tables of quantitative research will be published in a manner such that it will not be possible to identify any person. Furthermore, users will be informed comprehensively and have to agree to the data collection for scientific purposes with their signature. The legal experts of this project will guarantee that the recruiting process, including the information for the participants about data protection issues, fully complies with national and EU laws.
D 3.3. Report on the technical performance of the field test
The app system was developed with the ambition of potentially serving hundreds of thousands of household electricity customers. An important step on this way is the field testing with about 2,500 households in the course of the PEAKapp project. These households are real customers, and while kindly agreeing to participate on a voluntary basis, they expect a faultless and professional service from the app.
In this respect, an evaluation of all the findings took place in order to document the technical performance of the system. This report summarizes the procedures and the findings reported during the field test by customers.
This deliverable D3.3 provides a detailed description of the technical performance of the app.
D 4.1 Report of the quantitative field experiment analysis
The core question of the PEAKapp project is to which degree a household’s electricity consumption can be influenced by the household’s exposure to a software tool (the PEAKapp), which was developed within the PEAKapp project’s framework by Green Pocket in collaboration with Energieinstitut Linz and IJsfontain. The PEAKapp combines detailed consumption information with serious gaming and peer comparison (as described in more detail in Deliverable 1.3). In order to experiment and quantify the effectiveness of such an app on the overall reduction of a electricity demand, as well as, on a demand flexibility, the PEAKapp project conducted a randomized control trial by means of a field experiment with three treatment groups. Next to a control group, participating households were either exposed to varying electricity prices (short term price reductions) or to the PEAKapp. Around 1,500 households participated in the field experiment, which was conducted in the region Upper-Easter Austria over a period of 18 months.
The field experiment was completed in September 2018 and Deliverable 4.1 gives a detailed report on the design and execution of the field experiment, as well as, quantifies and discusses its findings. In the following sections we will summarize findings from previous field experiments within the same scope as PEAKapp and briefly compare the design of previous experiments with the design of the PEAKapp experimental set-up (section 2); give a detailed description of the design of the experiment and its final implementation (section 3); present and discuss both the descriptive and the quantitative results of the field experiment (section 4); and finally conclude and derive policy recommendations based the experimental findings (section 5).
D 4.2 Quantification of the success indicators and the KPIs
The PEAKapp project developed and testes a software tool that collected load profiles of households’ electricity consumption, transformed this rather technical data into user friendly aggregates, and returned the information to the households in a way to engage and motivate increased household energy efficiency.
This deliverable represents the results PEAKapp eKPIs and KPIs defined in Del 1.3. and Del 1.5. The defined eKPIs covered and quantified the extent to which the app actually stimulated energy efficient behaviour and had an impact on the related to electricity consumption decisions of the households. To answer this question, PEAKapp carried out field tests to provide important information for decision makers from utility companies, policy, consumer associations, and regional or federal energy planners, as well as other stakeholders. In this deliverable a set pre-defined indicators is analysed. PEAKapp was tested in four European countries: Austria, Estonia, Sweden and Latvia. The data for the calculation of these KPIs includes only the Austrian subset of data. The field tests in Austria ran from June 2017 to October 2018. Austrian field test was the longest in terms of duration and also with the highest per country number of participating households. PEAKapp offered to Austrian consumers was paired with Google Analytics data which allowed to collect information on each session in the app, this information is required for calculation of the eKPIs and KPIs defined in Del 1.3 and 1.5. PEAKapp version in Estonia, Latvia and Sweden differed from Austrian in the price treatment, users of PEAKapp in these countries had access to spot-market prices, there was also no pairing with Google analytics service due a different setting of the app. It is important to take into account in this respect that PEAKapp users in Austria represent roughly 60% of all PEAKapp users the results of this deliverable should be interpreted respectively. An important advantage of PEAKapp in Austria is the availability of the Google analytics data which allows estimation of actual treatment effect of the app, us the detailed information on when the app was used and in which way is available for each of the treated households. Previous studies in the field of household energy efficiency including the widely famous OPOWER home energy reports or numerous studies with in-home displays were solely presenting a so called intend-to-treat effect. The intend-to-treat effect does not take into account whether households actually read the reports, looked at the-in-home displays or in PEAKapp case used the app. In PEAKapp in the contrary, we define treated household as the ones that used the app in the respective month at least once.
In this Deliverable, a set of pre-developed indicators addressing the second of the aforementioned questions is discussed. These indicators were defined in Deliverable 1.5. Considering the differing technical preconditions and national legal/regulatory frameworks of the test sites, not all indicators can be provided for all sites. For example, in Austria figures about households’ electricity consumption are available in 15 minutes intervals, while Estonian regulation foresees metering of hourly values. In this Deliverable we focus on the data of the Austrian field test as for the calculations of the majority of the KPIs data about app usage from Google Analytics is required.
In contrast to the in Deliverable 1.5 pre-developed KPIs, that will support decision makers in assessing whether the tool developed in PEAKapp meets their requirements with respect to technical readiness, consumer comprehensibility, and the expected effort for the provision of the services to households, the predefined eKPIs of Deliverable 1.3 focus to measure the environmental impact of PEAKapp and as well as on the behavioural change in households’ energy consumption patterns, which was driven by PEAKapp.
The subsequent chapters describe these indicators and their interpretation in detail and provide an overview on data required for their quantification.
D 4.3 Report on possibile improvements
D 5.1 Privacy issues and consumer rights
The ICT-to-Human ecosystem is hosted by the electricity provider. One of the great advantages over systems being hosted by the grid operator is the portability of the system when households moves into a new residence. To facilitate a smooth and uncomplicated transfer of user-related historical data, benchmarks, and achievements in serious gaming, etc., to the new location, this has to happen under an unambiguous legal framework to ensure privacy and a secure transfer of the data. The legal team of PEAKapp will draw a clause for the standard business conditions of the service contract with the provider that ensures the above formulated consumer rights. The work on regulation done in this work package (see Task 5.3) will then analyse the need for making this clause a legal requirement for electricity providers, similar to rights of distribution system operators to grant consumers access to their load profiles.
D 5.2 Analyzing the impact of dynamic electricity prices on the Austrian energy system
D 5.3 Regulatory Framework
In order to exploit PEAKapp’s full energy efficiency, energy savings and load shifting capacities and to enable the implementation of future ICT-based efficiency technologies, PEAKapp proposes amendments to the regulatory practise. Based on an overview of currently applied grid tariffs in the EU, some possible suggestions for potential adjustments to the grid tariff structure is provided. While the discussions about the required transformation of grid tariffs to more dynamic and flexible are supported by empirical results collected in the field tests of the PEAKapp project, a smooth transition to such tariffs, taking into account potential impact on the household, is challenging.
Further on, the legal team of PEAKapp provides an overview on new European legislation concerning internal electricity markets and its main actors, followed by a detailed analysis of the dynamic pricing from regulatory perspective. Based on the analysis of the Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on common rules for the internal market in electricity (EU/2019/944), which now explicitly requires provisions for the possibility of dynamic prices, and the data protection provisions (analysed in task 5.1), there is no need to include a special clause (previously suggested in Del 5.1) in the supply contracts. Since these new rules on dynamic prices are an EU Directive, they must be transposed into national law by the Member States, which will facilitate the full exploitation of PEAKapp or similar ICT-to- Human ecosystems across member states.
D 5.4 Roll-out planning toolkit
From the costs perspective, this deliverable details what hardware and software equipment of an electricity company is required to host the ICT-to-Human ecosystem, what the administrative processes are being necessary for its operation, and what resources need to be dedicated during the implementation phase and then during the normal operation.
From the benefits perspective, the outcome from Deliverables 4.1 and 4.2 will serve as basis to assess achievable effects on customer loyalty, customers’ willingness to pay, and the other quantifiable effects and expectation of field-test participants.
This deliverable will provide the design and development of the roll-out toolkit (composed of a set of algorithms and data) including a user manual so any energy utility can assess the expected costs and benefits of using and deploying PEAKapp.
D 6.1 Dissemination, Exploitation and Communication (DEC) Strategy & Operative Plan
The purpose of the DEC Plan is to serve as a consensus finding, information and control instrument on all Dissemination, Exploitation and Communication (DEC) activities among all partners in the PEAKapp project. This deliverable is to publicly communicate the project and overview to the targeted stakeholders. As the project proceeds, the DEC plan will be refined.
The expected Impacts to be achieved by the PEAKapp project are listed are below:
- Impact 1: Systemic energy consumption and production and emissions reduction between 15% and 30%,
- Impact 2: Accelerate wide deployment of innovative ICT solutions for energy efficiency,
- Impact 3: Greater consumer understanding and engagement in energy efficiency.
Utility companies are highly interested in offering the innovative PEAKapp solution because they:
a) are obliged by the Energy Efficiency Directive (2012/27/EC) to trigger quantifiable energy savings,
b) are looking for new unique selling points as the European energy market is increasingly competitive for retail companies,
c) acknowledge social housing blocks as promising future bulk customers, and
d) need to motivate their household consumers to shift loads towards times of clean and lower priced energy.
D 6.3 Business model development
This deliverable aims to describe the methodology for the business model development in WP6 as well as the first outlook of the overall business model for the exploitation of project results. The development of the overall business model started in the first period and will continue under development during the second period. The business model might suffer changes considering the on-going field test (WP3) and the outcomes of the market uptake and privacy & regulatory framework (WP5). The conclusion of both WPs might affect not only PEAKapp Ecosystem but also the value propositions and the revenue streams planned in business model.
The overall business model of the PEAKapp ecosystem was sketched following the method for business model generation of Alexander Osterwalder (2010). However, this method has been adapted according to the specific situation of the PEAKapp project. This deliverable summarizes the inputs provided by the project partners during a workshop using the business model canvas at the consortium meeting in Amsterdam 3rd – 4th July 2017.
This deliverable also includes objectives and the activity plan for the second half of the project in terms of business opportunity development and exploitation planning. The second half of the project is the most important period in terms of exploitation planning considering the evaluation of the project technical resources generated in the project (PEAKapp ecosystem: PEAKapp, serious game, smart meters data).
D 6.6 Ready-to-sign-agreements & business /market launch plans
In compliance to the obligations to exploit and disseminate the project results (established in the Grant Agreement), partners have defined in this document the strategies aiming to ensure the use of results after the project ends. The exploitation plans focus in two main routes, namely, the commercial exploitation of the app functionalities (D1.2) developed in the project and further research and development activities. Also, partners have disseminated the project results to demonstrate the effects of the PEAKapp ICT solutions in energy consumption behaviors.
Partners GreenPocket aim to consolidate its market position as pioneers in the roll-out of their ICT solutions for the European energy market. IjsFontein aims to earn attention among energy utilities to exploit its gamification approaches. 220Energia has released its app developed in the project to its customers and to explore new ways to improve it as a customer engagement tool. While, Partner ENAMO (Energie AG) is committed to improve its existing e-service platform through the development of their owned system features based on the findings of the PEAKapp project. In general terms, all the post-project exploitation strategy aims to ensure the use ICT solutions to influence energy consumption behaviors, allowing end-users to interact with the utilities and benefit from lower electricity prices and obtain information on how they can make a more efficient use of energy.
The exploitation plans contained in this document also show the commitment of the partners in maximizing the impact of the project after it ends. In fact, the project results are not just the validated app-features influencing electricity consumption behaviors but also concrete strategies from SMEs and energy utilities to provide European citizens with more innovative ICT tools, incentives and information to improve their energy savings and better interaction systems between utilities and end-users. The more people use energy management systems, the greater the project impact will be. Particularly, in terms of significant reduction of electricity consumption while contributing to the EU App economy which has already generated 1.89 million jobs and the EU Digital Single Market which is expected to grow up to €739 billion by 2020, representing 4% of the overall EU GDP.
D 7.1 Project Handbook
The aim of the Project Handbook for PEAKapp is to describe the management roles, rights and duties of all parties and persons involved. It serves as a reference document for all project partners.
This document contains the management procedures and guidelines for the PEAKapp project. To realise the implementation of the PEAKapp project, the following management roles, structures and procedures have been established:
- Management Roles – Individual Assignments,
- Management Roles – Collective Assignments.
The Project Handbook will be updated by the Project Manager in regular intervals.
D 7.2 Data management plan
PEAKapp targets the development of an app to trigger lasting energy savings through behavioural change and continuous engagement, and to enable increased consumption of clean and low priced electricity from the spot market for household customers. The analysis of the impact of the app needs detailed research data about energy consumption, app usage, and contract and tariff information.
Deliverable 7.2 develops a data management plan which outlines most important points of how to handle the research data from the data generation process until data sharing. The subsequent chapters detail about the data management plan.
D 7.3 Privacy and Security Advisory Board System Specification Approval Letter
Cyber Security is a topic of highest priority in PEAKapp. The project consortium itself includes dedicated specialists on this topic, being involved in large-scale research activities with respect to cyber security of smart grids and smart metering (e.g. EI-JKU is partner of the SPARKS1 project). To have institutionalised supervision of the project’s activities to ensure cyber security of the ICT-to-Human ecosystem, the project established a Privacy and Security Advisory Board (PSAB). The PSAB is led by Alberto Stefanini, acknowledged contributor to the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) report2 on “Smart Grids Task Force Deliverable: Proposal for a list of security measures for smart grids” and his CV is found in the Appendix of this Deliverable.
In addition to Cyber Security, PEAKapp collects fine-grained electricity consumption data and includes functionalities allowing consumers to post specific data on platforms like Facebook, and therefore requires careful supervision of legal experts and privacy specialists. In PEAKapp, the consortium members together with the Privacy and Security Advisory Board agreed on the set of graphs and figures that can be posted by users. Furthermore, the user has the ability to deactivate Facebook posting altogether.
The analysis of privacy related and legal aspects was organized by Dr. Kathrin de Bruyn, project manager and WP leader of a significant number of national and European projects (e.g. she is leader of the legal and social acceptance WP in the FP 7 SPARKS – https://project-sparks.eu, and key legal expert in the Austrian national project RASSA – http://www.ait.ac.at/themen/smart-grid-security/rassa/) on the issue of smart metering and smart grid data protection.
The subsequent Letter was issued by the PSAB to PEAKapp and confirms careful consideration of the above mentioned issues.