Mobile-Computing Based Rationalization for Energy Consumption

This contribution shows how rationalized energy consumption can be achieved using user-oriented mobile application. It is undoubtable that energy efficiency improvement is one of the most important targets to be achieved on every society as a whole and in power system in particular. With the advent of smart grids, residential end users are expected to shift from their passive role as consumers of electricity to an active contributor role, referred to as co-provider, a term that reflects the consumer ability to reduce electricity usage, shift usage from on-peak to off-peak periods, generate and trade excess electricity. Based on different environmental behavior change models from behavior science, as well as a user study with prospective users, a hybrid energy consumption behavioral change model was proposed, and a set of well-defined requirements were identified and guided us through the design and development of a mobile cloud application called Mobile Cloud for Smart Grid Metering. This paper will describe the architecture, design and implementation of the proposed prototype, in addition to presenting and discussing the evaluations of usability results.