HômEnergy: A system to reduce home energy usage for systems and information design symposium

American home energy consumers comprise a significant portion of ever-increasing U.S. domestic energy usage, and the rise in home energy rates now exceeds inflation. If this trend continues, rising energy costs will further deplete home energy users' expendable income. The EIA projects electricity consumption in the US to grow by 2.9 percent during 2010, and another 1.2 percent next year. While various energy-saving devices are currently available to consumers, their use is hardly widespread. We are in the process of developing a system whose function combines the technologies of digital power meters and active "cut-off current-limiting devices. The system also offers users real-time energy usage feedback, so that homeowners may adjust their daily routines to save energy. It is our hope that such a system, through its ease of use and cost-effectiveness, will be more appealing to the general consumer, and achieve more widespread use. We are currently completing the development and testing of different individual components of this system. Through the development and testing of this system, we better understand why general consumers do not use existing energy-saving technologies to lessen their projected increase in energy consumption. This paper demonstrates the application of energy-saving preferences into design of cost-effective solutions that can have a transformative impact on home energy use into the near- and long-term future.