On the PARENT Platform, launched in November 2017, participants have access to their energy consumption compared to others with similar household characteristics (household size, surface area, municipality). For this purpose, participants were asked to install the Smappee energy monitor and the app. The second version of the platform, released in April 2018, includes project, energy and environment-related challenges that participants can engage in. Participants can compete against each other, see their name rise on the leader board and even win small prizes. While the comparison data focuses primarily on information provision and community awareness, the challenges are a gamification technique aimed at nudging participants to action. Not only do the challenges encourage a game like competition, it also features a collaborative aspect. It shows the most popular challenges accepted for inspiration, and the number of total actions taken by the entire pilot group is highlighted in order to show that together the many small actions add up.
Smappee is a small energy monitor that is installed next to the fuse box. Smappee measures the electric current coming into the fuse box with clamps and sends this data via Wi-Fi to the user’s Smappee application. On the application, users can see their electricity consumption in real time, as well as aggregated data over one day/week/month. Standby consumption is also identified. Smappee pushes notifications encouraging users to turn off devices when they notice that standby consumption is high. Further, with some human help, Smappee is able to distinguish between different appliances in the house. The app does not measure the quality of the household appliances installed in the household, but users can use their appliance data to compare with general information on the same appliances on the market. Finally, Smappee allows pairing with programmable plugs to schedule on/off times for appliances.
