METER
EPSRC Fellowship 2015-2020
METER is a national research project to understand what we use electricity for. It pioneered the combination of activity diaries and energy use data.
In this study we asked UK households to submit a one day record of their activities. During this day we also measure electricity use minute by minute.
The aproach of this project was made possible by the innovative use of smart phones for electricity and activity recording.
Key findings
- Hot evening meals are the single strongest predictor of peak demand in households
- Trial households reduced peak demand by 14.5% without financial incentive
- Flexible activities include laundry and even hot meals
- Collective peak demand can be reduced by over 70% with aggregation of diverse loads from fewer than 50 households
- Societal interventions, such as lockdown or changes to working arrangements, have a greater impact on load patterns than variable tariffs
- Load data must be made more accessible to their rightful owners (the user) to enable innovative business models and consensual learning
