Intelligent Agents for Home Energy Management

This collaborative interdisciplinary project sought to develop intelligent agents within the smart grid in order to reduce energy use within domestic settings. Bringing together an interdisciplinary team comprising School of Electronics and Computer Science, Sustainable Energy Research Group and Transportation Research Group this three year EPSRC project sought to apply novel artificial intelligence approaches to develop intelligent agents that enable domestic consumers to visualize, understand and manage their energy use.

The human factors work package of this project addressed the fact that it is humans, and not buildings, that consume energy. Understanding how to influence householder’s energy consuming behaviour could inform far reaching strategies to combat climate change. This work package explored how a Mental Model (MM) approach to design, could encourage achievement of home heating goals. Methods to capture, analyse and apply mental models of home heating systems were developed. A lab-based experiment comparing a naturalistic home heating interface with a mental model promoting interface was used to demonstrate how changes in interface design can increase goal achievement by promoting mental models that enable more appropriate behaviour strategies with heating controls.