Handy feedback: connecting smart meters with mobile phones

Reducing their energy consumption has become an important objective for many people. Consumption transparency and timely feedback are essential to support those who want to adjust their behavior in order to conserve energy. In this work, we propose an interactive system that provides instantaneous feedback concerning the energy usage on household and device level. For that, we used and extended the capabilities of a smart electricity meter, built a web-based API to enable interoperability with other applications, and developed a mobile phone interface that allows users to monitor, control, and measure the consumption of single appliances. Our system illustrates a way how usage barriers can be lowered and how high user involvement can be created. By providing users the electricity feedback needed – in real-time and on device level – the system allows for identifying the biggest energy guzzlers and helps users decrease their energy consumption. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.4...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: MUM
• Authors: Markus Weiss, Friedemann Mattern, Tobias Graml, Thorsten Staake, Elgar Fleisch
• Keywords: Device Level, Energy Consumption, Feedback, Multimedia, MUM 2009