EnerGAware - Energy Game for Awareness of energy efficiency in social housing communities

The main objective of the EnerGAware project was to decrease energy consumption and emissions in an affordable housing pilot and increase the affordable housing tenants’ understanding and engagement in energy efficiency. The EnerGAware project developed and tested, in 100 affordable homes, a serious game that was linked to the actual energy consumption (smart meter data) of the game user’s home and embedded in social media and networking tools.

The EnerGAware solution provided an innovative IT ecosystem in which users could design their own virtual home and Avatar and learn about the potential energy savings from installing energy-efficiency measures and changing user behaviour, whilst maintaining the comfort of their Avatar. The user was required to learn to balance the energy consumption, comfort and financial cost of their actions. Energy savings achieved both virtually in the game, calculated by building performance simulation, and in reality, in the users’ actual homes, measured through smart meter data, enabled progression in the game. The social media features provided users a platform to share data of their achievements, compete with each other, give energy advice, as well as join together to form virtual energy communities.

With a budget of over 1 million euros, the EnerGAware solution was developed and deployed with the ‘cleanweb’ philosophy in mind: “Capital light, Quick to market and Quick to scale”. 

The project started in 2015 and was completed in 2018.

Main beneficiaries: the energy-poor and low-income population.

It addressed the topics of: behaviour, idea development/ innovation, information and awareness and energy efficiency.