Page 22 - European Energy Innovation - Summer 2017 publication

22 Summer 2017 European Energy Innovation
COMMUNICATION
NATCONSUMERS
OBJECTIVES
The residential sector accounts for a
quarter of all energy consumption in
the EU. Reducing household energy
use across Europe is therefore critical
to efforts to cut carbon emissions.
However, altering the ways in which
people use energy within their homes
is difficult. It is not easy to change long-
established habits, nor is it easy to target metering across Europe, the project
such a diverse population in order to
help these changes come about.
Previous efforts to communicate
with consumers have been very
much focused on price or simplistic
comparisons as means to motivate
changes in consumption. These
approaches are focused primarily
on information provision, on the
assumption that all humans are
‘rational actors’ who will respond
to financial drivers. Through the
NATCONSUMERS project however
we have taken a new approach, based
around understanding householders
as individual people, rather than as
homogenous, energy consuming
agents. We thought we needed to start
a conversation with the end customer.
It’s not about dictating to them and
ordering people to do things, it’s about
creating a conversation.
To do this, the NATCONSUMERS
project has developed a methodology
for communicating with consumers
The flowchart of segmentation
Consumer Smart Smart
Meter Data
! Socio-
Demographics
Data
Privacy
Online Appliances
Questionnaire
Attitude
using ‘Natural Language’ –
communication which is friendly,
emotionally intelligent, relevant and
simple. The NATCONSUMERS tool is
designed to raise awareness about
how people use energy within their
homes, and to give them advice about
how to use energy more sustainably.
Capitalising on the roll-out of smart-
utilises smart-meter data to provide
tailored advice to householders.
TAILORING THE ADVICE
The underlying premise which
NATCONSUMERS is built upon is
that for energy efficiency advice
to be truly effective, it must be
tailored. Tailored advice has been
found, through multiple studies, to
be much more effective than more
generic recommendations. Variations
in consumers’ characteristics and
behaviours lead to heterogeneous
energy demands, influenced by both
individual preferences and physical
variables. As such, if we are to change
these energy demands, our advice
must be similarly heterogeneous to
ensure it is relevant and actionable for households use, or the total ‘volume’
the consumer in question.
Moreover, advice must also be
presented to consumers in Natural
Language. This means that advice
messages should be easy to
understand, avoiding jargon or
Database Load Profile Benchmark
Segmentation Groups
Socio- What to say
Demographic
Segmentation
Attitudinal
Classification
What to say
technical language, and should
be communicated in a friendly,
emotionally intelligent way. In order
to communicate in Natural Language,
we must ensure advice is both relevant
and interesting to consumers. When
determining what the content of a
message should be, we must consider
the household’s context to ensure the
advice provided is relevant to them.
When determining how the message
should be communicated, we must
understand the consumer’s attitudes
and values, to allow the message to
be framed in terms which will be of
interest.
In order to achieve this, within
NATCONSUMERS we have created
three segmentation models. The
first utilises smart-meter data to
categorise consumers based upon
their electricity load profile – i.e. based
on their patterns of energy usage over
time. This allows us to identify typical
electricity usage profiles. The second
segmentation is based on socio-
demographics. This has been used
to investigate how much electricity
of consumption. Combined, these
two segmentations allow us to paint a
picture of a user’s overall energy usage,
in terms of both patterns and quantities
of use. Subsequently, this allows
for users to be compared to other
households with the same profile, i.e.
comparison to a benchmark segment.
The results of these two segmentations
help to determine the content of advice
messages – they allow us to identify
what subject matter will be relevant to
each household.
The third segmentation has been
constructed from a survey of
consumers’ attitudes and values. From
this, we can identify what interests each
householder – for example, are they
interested in saving money, protecting
the environment, making their home
more comfortable, etc. – and can
therefore re-frame the message in
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