The North East Scotland energy monitoring project: exploring relationships between household occupants and energy usage

The total amount of energy consumed by households over a given period of time is a function of socio-physical factors and occupant behaviour. Findings are presented here from Phase 1 of the three-phase North East Scotland Energy Monitoring Project (NESEMP), a longitudinal study of household energy consumption patterns including baseline, intervention, and post-intervention evaluation phases. Electricity data from 215 households were recorded remotely at 5-min intervals between January 2011 and January 2012 inclusive. The study explored the different electricity consumption profiles associated with particular household types. It is suggested that such empirically-derived profiles have great potential in illuminating group differences and that these merit further research. Households were also asked to fill in a carbon footprint calculator questionnaire as part of the study and estimated carbon footprints derived from the carbon calculation tool were compared against electricity use. A significant association was found between carbon footprint estimates derived from the carbon calculation tool (specifically the component related to appliance use) and the actual electricity consumed by households. This demonstrates that the carbon footprint calculator – a pen-and-paper questionnaire that does not take actual energy consumption into account – can potentially be used as a tool to gauge electricity use where consumption data are not available