A sustainable user-centered application for residential energy consumption saving

Abstract

Being a significant contributor to energy consumption, residential buildings are now in crucial need to reduce and schedule their energy usage. It was found that the previous research on energy management have focused on the technological solutions without considering the users’ needs and requirements. To address this gap, user’s involvement is considered as cornerstone in developing a solution. For this purpose, a survey was designed and answered by 410 participants. Statistical analysis was used to identify the significant factors affecting the users’ willingness to use a mobile application to manage their energy consumption. Fuzzy AHP was used to analyze users’ preferences and behaviors, then K-means clustering was used to rank the various home appliances’ priorities according to the users’ preferences. Finally, a mobile application framework was proposed to enable a user-friendly tool to schedule home appliances operations. It was found that 70% of the users are willing to use such application as it can save money through managing their energy consumption while considering their preferences at the same time while having a positive environmental impact. Such approaches can change the utility-customer relationship from supplier-buyer relation to an efficient and sustainable partnership with an expected energy saving up to 15%.