1. The Sustainability Problem is the lack of real-time information for residents about their home energy and water consumption.
2. Technology
Source: Energy pass, a new tool to monitor service charges in new buildings, Le Moniteur.fr
- The Energy-Pass Tablet is an energy, water and heating monitoring tool to optimize residential consumption and lower low-income residents’ utility bills.
- The technology is part of a broader service offer that includes residents teaching programs and maintenance services.
- Other relevant information can be uploaded to the tablet to improve residents quality of life (public transportation schedules, weather…).
- The technology is being tested in 54 social housing units in Paris area and this pilot project has been approved by the ADEME (French Energy Management and Environment Agency).
- Proposed by Bouygues Bâtiments Ile-de-France (Bouygues Construction). Similar products -though web-based and energy-focused – are proposed by the Californian Agilewaves or The Energy Detective.
3. Stakeholders
- Building owners and architects to adopt the technology and integrate the device upstream in social housing construction and budgeting process – in order to have a coherent financial and technical system at the building scale
- Electricians for setting up, updating and maintaining the hard and software in individual home
- Customers-residents to use the monitoring device daily and keep track of their consumptions in order to change their habits and reduce their utility costs
- The technology seller, Bouygues Ile de France: to teach customers how to use the tablet, propose updates and collect customer feedback (directly from the tablet for example)
- Energy and water suppliers are indirect stakeholders that might experience a decrease in demand due to an efficient use of the tablet. They could also collect consumption information directly from the tablet
4. Deployment steps
NB : the technology being currently tested, the 3 steps start from the real stage of the technology deployment
1 – Collect customer feedback on tablets and services and actual consumption reduction data from the pilot project; then improve the technology soft and hardware accordingly.
2- Communicate on successes to convince major social landlords and architects to partner, in France and internationally, so the technology becomes a must-have in social housing offers (before making it a legal requirement).
3 –Scale it up to other uses:
- other new buildings (beyond low income housing)
- existing buildings (during retrofitting operations)
- commercial buildings (part of employee awareness)
This seems like a great idea, and a good residential product. By enabling consumers to visualize overall consumption in a simple way, consumers may be more proactive about reducing consumption. Monetary savings is a nice incentive to trigger behavioral change. It would be great to have this technology rolled out to existing buildings. Nice post!
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