Individual and collective action is an important driver of energy consumption in households. In Social Power Plus (SPP) we aim at directly engaging teams of neighbouring households to raise their awareness and promote active energy sufficiency measures (electricity and heating). To support this process, we launch living lab activities aimed at co-creating and field-testing a mobile app exploiting digital energy feedback, gamification and social norms.

SPP is a follow-up project of Social Power. It enriches the previously carried out research work by adding to the tracking and display of electricity consumption data of households, also the disaggregated data from heating consumption of heat pumps, electric heating systems or gas, either directly provided by smart meters or calculated by means of smart sensors and non-intrusive load monitoring algorithms. Not only. Through the living labs and collaborative activities within teams of households, SPP also aims to promote, to a greater extent, the use of participatory approaches to identify solutions in favor of energy sufficiency, as such a methodology contributes to stimulating social cohesion and creating a greater sense of belonging to a community. This, in the future, could lay the foundations for the development of self-consumption communities, thus contributing to the diffusion of a more democratic, decentralized and sustainable energy model.