Pilot results: interim report

This report documents the first batch of datasets obtained from the events and activities held by the five pilots throughout the first 22 months of the NUDGE project. It comprises an overview of the datasets generated from the energy interventions through field trials, in particular for the pre-intervention phase, concluded for all the pilots, except for the Croatian Pilot. The aspects addressed in this document include reporting on the characteristics of the households selected per pilot, data collected from the execution of the works conducted in the different countries and the quality assurance and control (QA/QC) related to the results that are reported. Data collected per pilot includes geographical and climate /meteorological data, survey and technical relevant data on the characteristics of the participant households, interaction of the users with the digital user interfaces (apps and webportal), and data on Energy use that has been collected in the NUDGE Central Platform).

The NUDGE project includes a comprehensive applied methodology focusing on testing the potential of behavioural-science inspired energy efficiency interventions with real users and quantify the respective energy-efficient behaviour change by the implementation of 5 pilot trials in different European countries:

  • Efficient control of heating and DHW preparation for Natural Gas consuming boilers in Greece (GR);
  • Interdisciplinary project-based education on home energy consumption for children in Belgium (BE);
  • Optimization of EV charging with self-produced PV power in Germany (DE);
  • Healthy homes for long-lasting energy efficiency behaviour in Portugal (PT);
  • Promoting distributed self-production for local Energy communities in Croatia (HR).

The 5 pilots offer high heterogeneity and differentiate with each other with respect to contextual factors of the pilot participants (e.g., country, age groups, income), energy use scenario (e.g., household heating, EV charging, PV production), technology/platform used as mediator for operationalizing the interventions (e.g., mobile app, web portal) and to the means of measuring and communicating (e.g., human interaction, short notifications by a feedback system). At the same time the pilots share the use of energy monitoring and management tools (energy consumption and production where applicable) and of digital user interfaces (enabling the interaction with end consumers and the operationalization of the planned interventions), suited to the pilot-specific needs.

In addition, the execution of all five pilots in NUDGE follows an identical three-phase time plan that includes pre-intervention (baseline data), intervention (testing of the planned interventions) and post-intervention phases (long-lasting behavioural change analysis).

The intervention phase consists of the implementation of 3 sequential interventions (1st/2nd/3rd intervention phases, called also of NUDGE 1, NUDGE2 and NUDGE 3) that are delivered to the users through the pilot-specific interface tools (apps, webportal).

This report aims at compiling information on the data sets architecture and preliminary data resulting from the implementation of the 5 pilots by June 2022.
At the time of this interim report, the pilots have concluded the pre-intervention phase, or are at the final stage of this baseline phase (Croatian Pilot), and two pilots (Greek and German ones) had also completed their first intervention phase (NUDGE 1).

The collected data that are relevant to the pilots comprise:

  • Geographical and climate/meteorological data
    o Maps with the location of the participant households
    o Meteorological data from public databases (Copernicus data for the period of study from the beginning of the pre-intervention phase)
  • Relevant characteristics of the participant households
    • Survey data
  • Technical data
  • Data on the interaction of the users with the digital user interfaces
  • Data on Energy use (energy meters data collected in the NUDGE Central Platform)

In particular, this report presents preliminary data (obtained by June 2022) on geographical and climate/meteorological information, survey and technical relevant data on the characteristics of the participant households, interaction of the users with the digital user interfaces (apps and webportal), and on data on Energy use that has been collected in the NUDGE Central Platform) per NUDGE pilot.

At the time of writing, the recruitment of participants for some of the pilots (Greek, Croatian and Belgium (2nd cohort)) is ongoing as well as data management and analytics activities. Thus, the present report is more focused on presenting the type of information and parameters that have been monitored and on disclosing the structure of the datasets that are being generated.

What comes next?
The pilots are expected to continue the progression in terms of recruitment of the final sample of participants, execution of the pilot-specific intervention plans and data management and analytics.

Report