Gamification for Electricity Use Profiling

Over the last two decades we are witnessing an accelerating paradigm shift in electricity grids and markets. The power grid, enabled by technologies such as renewable energy sources (RES), microgeneration, telemetering and telecontrol, is required to move towards demand side management, under the pressure for energy saving and low carbon economy on the one hand and electricity market deregulation on the other. Demand side management requires the user to be an active agent interacting in real time with the grid and the markets rather than a passive consumer whose only interaction with the grid is paying the bill and reporting faults. Under this light, the majority of electricity users could be considered as technologically illiterate, lacking fundamental knowledge and skills, which hinders the uptake of technologies and distorts related policies. The gamified application presented in this work combines persuasive and serious game technologies to educate users in electrical energy consumption, production and markets and engage them in energy saving behaviour, relevant techniques and technologies, while, at the same time, enabling them to transfer the skills and knowledge acquired to the real world. To these ends, our application uses the cognitive approach to develop educational material for the users’ capacity building, gamification to motivate, engage and trigger users to form their own-shaped learning curves towards controlling their energy profiles, and SCADA technology to link the virtual to the real world. The proposed methodology can be applied to educational as well as commercial gamified applications.