The design of an energy and water advice programme for low-income households

• An energy and water advice programme has been designed specifically for low-income households.
• Advice is provided as part of an ICT service providing feedback and information.
• The ICT service aims to improve behaviour-based energy and water efficiency and achieve savings.
• For the design of the advice programme end-user requirements were considered.
• An evaluation survey was conducted to provide insight for the improvement of the service which will lead to more energy and water savings and user satisfaction with the service.

Occupants of residential buildings are not always fully aware of the potential to save energy or water in their homes since they do not know much about their consumption profiles neither do they know all the measures they could apply and behaviours they could adopt for this purpose. Numerous behaviour change programmes have been developed in the past years, that help occupants exploit their home's saving potential by providing feedback, information and advice. Many of these programmes rely on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) as an enabling technology for energy and water efficiency.This paper presents an energy and water advice programme designed specifically for social housing. Advice is provided as part of an ICT service providing feedback and information to social housing occupants aiming to improve behaviour-based energy and water efficiency. Provision of advice supplements direct feedback with the aim of achieving the maximum savings possible. The service was developed based on a commonly followed methodology that included collection of requirements for the service design and user evaluation of the service after it had been used. Utilities were monitored along with indoor environmental parameters to ensure that health and comfort of the occupants is not compromised in favour of saving.