• Smart consumer
  • Smart customer
  • Smart citizen

Preparation

As the user often plays a key role in the success of smart products or services, placing them central in the preparation phase is vital. Be prepared on the essential topics and ways of engaging consumers, before you start designing your project or roll out.

Bonus/malus – changing behaviour with rewards and penalties - Rewards and penalties can be used to improve demand response behaviour and to help users become aware of their consumption habits. This guideline explains how bonus/malus can be applied in energy tariffs and gamification approaches.

Co-creation - collaborating to develop smart energy solutions - If you – as an energy utility or service provider – intend to involve consumers or enterprises in the development of smart energy products or services, this guideline provides guidance in deciding whether co-creation fits your needs, and supports you in preparing such a process.

How to gather community support for your smart grid - This guideline examines how smart grid development can intersect with the dynamics of energy community initiatives. How can your smart grid project facilitate the formation of an energy community? And how can community dynamics influence consumer engagement in a project?

How to identify regional stakeholders - For successful smart grid projects that take place on a local or regional level, it is important to include affiliated decision makers who support and disseminate your project. This guideline gives an introduction into the topic of stakeholder analysis.

How to make energy visible through feedback - Utilities that want to develop and implement energy feedback to their customers need to consider both benefits and potential challenges from the possible options. This guideline provides advice and good examples on when and how feedback can be used in smart grid projects.

Introducing smart appliances - Here you can learn about the potentials of connecting appliances to a smart grid, and their possible functions and benefits in doing so. Based on an extensive analysis of smart grid projects we have identified success factors for implementing smart appliances.

Learning about target groups - This guideline provides an overview of methods that can be applied to better understand the socio-demographic profile of target groups and their attitudes, values and behaviour.

Privacy and data protection - What should be taken into account when dealing with privacy, data protection and personal data storage? This guideline provides an overview of recommended measures and methods that help preserve the user’s data protection rights.  

Recruiting participants - Provides advice on how to recruit the consumers for the needs of your smart grid project, product or service. The guideline is intended for project coordinators introducing new smart grid projects.

Setting up customer support in a smart grid - The customer support guideline is meant for project managers who need to assure that the customers that are participating in the smart grid have a dedicated hotline.

Testing tariff schemes in a pilot context - You can find practical advice for researchers on how to test a tariff scheme in an experimental set-up. It also provides suggestions to face barriers (e.g. regulatory) which might hamper a realistic application of the tariff scheme. For optimal use of this guideline, the reader must be familiar with dynamic tariffs.