Visualizing Energy Consumption

Many organizations and some governments are currently exploring the idea to visualize how much energy we use in our homes. The idea is to put up some kind of device to show the current amount of energy usage and in that way convince to save energy - or at least not waste it as much as we do now.

This is actually good idea, but it will only work it is designed to look spectacular. We don't want some technical "meter" hanging in our living room. This one by Delroy Dennisur would do the trick - looks awesome:

(via YankoDesign)

Comments

Jonathan - Dec. 3, 2007

While I agree we don't want to have a geeky "meter" on the wall, there is clearly a information design problem here that's just NOT being solved by this device. It's just a YATI - Yet Another Traffic Light Idea. The laziest of lazy design responses.

I'll ignore the obvious colour blindness issue because that goes without saying. The main trouble with traffic lights to show levels and to communicate warning about something like power consumption is that it ignores the issue of context and "situation awareness" that the user needs . If I'm showing yellow, then I need to know how that's calibrated (or at least be confident that the calibration is reliable). Am I yellow compared to this time yesterday? This time last year? What about season? Is there a target I should be aiming at like an average for my area? My yellow may be your red. What about time? Is one hour on yellow acceptable? How long have I been on red? Without some attempt at communicating context it's just meaningless eye candy. A lava lamp for the 21st century.

Yes, it looks like this device shows KW/h figures - but the same problem applies. It's just figures. No context (not even a cost-based one by the looks of it).

Greenwashing in the name of politics is one thing - in the name of design it's inexcusable. The writer of this blog should be ashamed to support it.

Thomas Baekdal - Dec. 3, 2007

The writer of this blog should be ashamed to support it.

I do agree that some of your points is valid, and makes sense. But, I do not think a device like this is simple eye-candy.

A device like this should have a certain level of awareness. First of all, a family of 5 uses considerable more energy than single person. But a two persons does not necessarily use more energy than one person.

Also, what amount of the power is green, vs. polluting. If you have windmill in your backyard then you might be using more energy, but polluting much less than other people.

A device like this must be able to be calibrated, as you write. It must take into account the number of people using that energy, and lastly it must remember that we cannot live without using energy.

I am right now using my computer, and I got 3 lights on in my living room. I cannot turn off any of them. I obviously cannot turn of my computer because I could not write this. I cannot off any of my lights because then I cannot see (and remember that room ambient lights are just as important as direct lights on your desk).

What I can do (and what I actually do), is to make sure that the lights I use is fluorescent light to minimize the energy usage, without sacrificing the needed lighting levels - and use a laptop computer that uses considerably less power than a desktop computer.

If this device cannot understand this, and only show excessive energy usage as yellow or red, then it is useless. But, if it is calibrated correctly then it would be very useful.

Jonathan - Dec. 6, 2007

Exactly - but my point is that this design is a bad one and I'm surprised that you think it isn't. It looks very nice, but the designer has clearly given no thought to the problem they should be solving. That problem is the preservation of planet earth and how to help people do that. Such a problem deserves more than some curvy box that turns red when you put you oven on.

At best, I would say this is art. It's certainly not design.

Thomas Baekdal - Dec. 7, 2007

Hi Jonathan,

There is one reason why I do not discard this project as a bad one.

It is only a concept, and more importantly Delroy have focused on how to create a more usable visualization of energy consumption. Compared to other devices this is a much more usable way to tell people how much energy they use - using simple but powerful graphics and color.

I do, of course, agree with what you. If this device does not take a number of issues into account, then it is just useless devices with some pretty colors.

But, this concept is to me an exploration of energy visualization, and I think Delroy has done a very good job at that. The rest is technical; it is how it is programmed, how the computer inside it works. He needs to solve these technical problems if it were to be more than a simple concept and move it into production.

Delroy has, to me, solved the problem as an interaction designer. The rest is a task for the developers and engineers.

interaction design - Jan. 4, 2008

I like the initial idea. The unit however shows you 'energy consumption' but not how much damage it actually does to the environment. I like the proposal to visualize the damage / consumption. Would it not be possible to visualize the equivalent trees necessary to compensate for the energy consumption? It could make people really think about their actions. If I turn on the washing machine, it uses x number of trees etc....

Nick Taylor - Jan. 29, 2008

I like this idea a lot - basically because I thought of it about 10 years ago - using colour coding to create a kind of pavlovian response... an aversion to red, and therefore consciousness of the levels of energy being used.

Then one day I found myself with a electrical engineer neighbour and we did some experiments... and were immediately hit by a calibration issue - namely, the thing that uses most electricity is heating/cooling water. You can turn all the lights off that you like - when your thermostat flicks on, or your fridge changes phase, all your careful adjusting goes out the window.

These people : have taken the idea and given it a numeric output - http://www.centameter.com.au/

but the devices are way too expensive... and I don't think people respond to numbers the way they do colours.

I think someone will probably figure it out at some point though.

broken link - Jun. 12, 2008

http://www.coroflot.com/public/individual_set.asp?individual_id=103740&;set_id=122202