The Character of Eco-feedback Systems for Energy Communities

Energy communities are emerging around Europe with a vision to transition the traditional centralised energy system to one where individual households can collaborate to become energy producers. Although the vision of energy communities is still in a formative stage, it seems members of such organisations will need digital technology to manage and organise renewable energy together. The design of eco-feedback designs appears as a digital means to create awareness of this need. Yet, until recently, eco-feedback has been designed to target the individual householder. The research presented in this paper aims to identify design characteristics of eco-feedback systems aimed at collaborative energy communities. We explore two different concept designs that are evaluated in a focus group session with prospective energy community members to establish design characteristics. The findings show that participants not only identified characteristics related to different eco-feedback design characters but also identified a set of properties related to the collaborative and social nature of the community.