Measuring and Evaluating Time- and Energy-use Relationships (METER)

METER addresses a fundamental research question: "What is the temporal relationship between electricity consumption and household activities?". To date this relationship is still poorly understood. METER will address this gap by collecting electricity consumption data in parallel with time-use information using adapted smart phone technology.

A detailed understanding of 'what electricity is used for', especially during peak demand periods, is important in addressing emerging system balancing challenges and to develop appropriate policy frameworks and business models leading to the cost effective integration of low-carbon generation.

At present electricity is supplied based on a 'predict and provide' paradigm - so long as we can forecast 'how much' electricity is required at any one time, the fleet of mostly fossil fuel based plants can be scheduled to deliver. Little knowledge about the end-uses of energy has been required for this approach. With low carbon sources, such as nuclear, solar and wind, more flexibility may be required from the demand side. Understanding the end use activities supported by electricity becomes more important when seeking to reduce or shift the timing of consumption.

Studies attempting to measure electricity use at the appliance level have so far been limited in their scale by the cost and complexity of instrumentation. The absence of statistically robust consumption data has been noted as limiting the UK's world leading research in this area.

METER develops a new approach to collect electricity consumption in parallel with time-use information. Smart phone technology, developed by colleagues at Oxford, will be deployed to measure electricity consumption at 1 second resolution and ask participants about the activities they undertake at critical times of the day. The use of smart phones allows this process to be performed at unprecedentedly low costs, such that over 2000 households can be included in the study. This scale is important, because electricity uses are highly diverse and only a sufficiently large sample allows to develop statistically significant evidence for researchers and policy makers.

The concurrent collection of time-use and electricity consumption can improve the accuracy of time-use research and provide new insights into the use and timing of electricity consumption and its relationship with household activities. The data and the analytical tools developed by METER will provide much needed insights into the timing of electricity uses, which can underpin a wide range of future research priorities. Among them are emerging energy system balancing challenges and broader policy challenges relying on statistically robust information about the relationship between energy use, demographics, lifestyles and their transitions over time.

Findings and insights from METER trials will become publicly available as part of a public outreach campaign, including interactive online tools to explore how Britain uses its electricity and what the public can do to support the transition towards a lower carbon future.

Research (immediate): End-use energy demand, network and storage research; Time-use research

- METER outputs will benefit ongoing energy research directly. Especially research under EPSRC's End-Use Energy Demand theme will gain a new source of data and methodologies for their implementation into existing and future models, thus alleviating a present shortage of consumption data. The outputs will ease the reliance on small datasets or deemed assumption about the composition of electricity demand. This also benefits related energy research disciplines, such as network studies (at low voltage level as well as for national grid and interconnects) and studies on the integration of storage, who rely on reliable load profile information.
- Time-use research will be advanced by developing and applying new methodologies and techniques for diary collection. The cross-disciplinary combination with time resolved electricity consumption profiles allows for more targeted, effective and therefore accurate collection of time-use information.


Research (indirect): Economists, Medical-/ Social science

Time-use research has an unusually wide range of applications and the inclusion of electricity consumption can only widen this. WS3 will seek new links, such as:
- Economists may be interested in the relationship between economic activity and electricity consumption types
- Medics can learn from activity/ health/ comfort level and consumption relationships (including for fuel poor subsets)
- Social scientists could gain new insights and definitions of fuel poverty and advance our understanding of socio-demographic relationships with different types of electricity use


Commercial private sector

Several small and large scale businesses may benefit directly (from outputs) or indirectly (from longer term outcomes).
- National Grid and small demand focussed businesses, such as Pilio and Moixa have already expressed their interest (see letters of endorsement). They can use METER data directly to calibrate their models and to better understand their clients. This also applies to distribution network operators, who increasingly have to manage loads to ensure voltage stability.
- New business models could emerge from the research results. Should, for instance, a particular user profile lend itself to effective load shifting, service providers can target these and create economic value through new forms of energy service provision.


Policy makers (local, national), regulators

- National policy makers have difficult choices to way up, while attempting to create a 'level playing field' between highly diverse options, including flexible generation, storage and demand response. METER will make significant advances in providing policy relevant evidence on the potential scope and limitations to the exploitation of demand response resources through different policy approaches.
- METER will benefit local authorities/DNOs/Ofgem in planning network capacity requirements for expanding communities more accurately.


Wider public

1) Thousands of participants will receive their personal load profile, which raises their awareness of the relationship between their activities and electricity consumption.
2) Results will be made publicly available in an interactive and engaging way on the project website. Publics can explore these and gain insights into their own uses of energy.
3) The above mentioned new business models for energy service provision, which may emerge from this research, benefit all customers. Those most able and willing to provide load shifting, provide a service of wider societal value, because the cost of electricity provision can be reduced and security of supply increases. Being able to identify and target initiatives on the most able response providers maximises consumer surplus and is thus economically more efficient than indiscriminate approaches.
METER thus contributes to the UK's low carbon future ambitions.