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Introduction
To facilitate the cross-exchange of knowledge between EU projects, improving the use of lessons learnt and enhancing the improvement of project results, five EU projects on demand-response (DR) and energy communities started to closely collaborate in April 2021. iFLEX (Intelligent Assistants for Flexibility Management), ACCEPT (ACtive Communities & Energy Prosumers for the energy Transition), HESTIA (Holistic dEmand response Services for European residenTIAl communities), SENDER (Sustainable Consumer engagement and demand response), and ReDREAM (REAL CONSUMER ENGAGEMENT THROUGH A NEW USER-CENTRIC ECOSYSTEM DEVELOPMENT FOR END-USERS’ASSETS IN A MULTI-MARKET SCENARIO) were all in their starting phase and their urgent and common challenge was related to the active participation of users in their projects. This open letter follows the format used by the workshop held in SP2022 (Sustainable Places 2022). The questions were asked by the moderator and the answers were given by sister projects’ representatives, together summarising the collaborative work performed by the five projects. Because of time restrictions, not all the projects’ representatives were able to reply to all the discussed themes, however this open letter represents the main aspects and activities performed that the representatives aimed to share with a wider public as lessons learnt in the pilot sites development. It specially focuses on publicly exchanging information, best practices and challenges identified during the different activities achieved, so that interested stakeholders could use it as “on the field” literature to be used in their projects.
What are the main engagement strategies followed by your project to recruit end-users?
HESTIA created an inclusive and participatory strategy for engaging households in the design and development of the HESTIA platform and the DR proposed solutions. Co-creation, as the ongoing involvement of all relevant stakeholders (not just users/householders), has proven to be a fundamental and challenging task to create DR projects with a bottom-up approach. Challenges, like the pandemic which was happening during the first steps of this process, brought about the need to rethink the engagement approach (e.g., face-to-face interactions were partly replaced with virtual home tours and online interviews in order to keep a continuous line of communication with users). The most important lesson learnt by the project is related to the need to keep project participants in continuous communication with the project developers — making them aware of the process and their involvement at each stage. Community-collective engagement has proven to be very important to participants, rather than just individual engagement in single households. Furthermore, issues related to age, socio-cultural background, gender, and digital literacy have been considered in the engagement process and, as a result, HESTIA has developed recommendations for inclusivity and participation of different household typologies which can be further developed for future DR and energy communities’ projects.
SENDER structured its engagement strategy in three phases: the first phase focuses on recruitment, and it is dedicated to dissemination of information materials, events, workshops, individual energy counselling, and surveys; the second phase focuses on social pressure and gamification, which highlights the benefits of participating while involving citizens in the actual rollout and installation activities; the third phase focuses on persistence, which involves setting up an online forum, signing on beta users, arranging exhibitions and seminars, and measures to demonstrate the actual impact of their DR actions to the citizens.
ReDREAM’s engagement strategy is based on three pillars: first, to provide benefit over time in order to maintain user engagement throughout the project; second, to offer added value so that benefits obtained are greater than the costs involved; and third, to build a trustful ecosystem. In addition to these pillars are a complementary set of principles that guide the design of engagement strategies and the ecosystem: personalization, feasibility, transparency, simplicity, discoverability, and automatization.
Regarding recruitment strategy, ReDREAM defined a threefold approach based on target, messages, and channels. Moreover, two strategic approaches to recruitment were applied. Initially, a “motivation-to-eligibility” strategy was followed, targeting users with allegedly mid-to-high levels of motivation and then assess their eligibility to join the project. Demos are oriented to test implicit and explicit flexibility electricity provision and can last from three to twelve months. Economic benefits, identity confirmation, environmental gains in the form of reduced carbon emissions, and community value provision were used as the basis for the recruitment messages. This approach was complemented with an “eligibility-to-motivation strategy,” targeting users with necessary equipment and using messages to demonstrate the value they will glean from participating in the project. However, a limitation to this targeting strategy is that there is not a database of households that include their heating/cooling system. Nevertheless, an analysis of the electric consumption of members, among other strategies, could serve to identify members with heat pumps or EVs insofar as they would have a greater than average consumption.
ACCEPT is focusing its engagement strategy on awareness raising campaigns, recruitment – primarily carried out through the pilot partners who acted as “gate keepers” to their communities – and planning for engagement activities including workshops, one-to-one meetings, and presentations. Furthermore, the elaboration of communication material is playing a crucial role in ACCEPT’s engagement strategy, as it enables the process of building trust between the pilot leaders and the local communities. The recruitment strategy is still being implemented.
iFLEX’s engagement strategy is focusing on the recruitment of end-users (residential energy consumers and prosumers) from the three pilot sites that are being deployed in Finland, Slovenia and Greece, by using personal and direct communications; promoting short and clear surveys in the registration phase in order to provide additional information about devices, energy-awareness and incentives; offering free equipment installation; prizes; promoting the opportunity to be part of the environmental and innovation activities of iFLEX project; and creating communication campaigns on the pilots websites and social media accounts.
Did you have to adjust your engagement strategies in any way? If yes, why was that (different culture in each pilot area, gender aspects, types of users, etc.)?
ReDREAM identified eight archetypes depending on the users’ interest or prior engagement with energy (non-conscious, conscious, active and participative) and their technological readiness and/or attitudes towards technology (Tech wary, Tech enthusiasts, Tech agnostic and Tech conformist), (Gómez-Barredo et al., 2021). The engagement strategies were adapted to these archetypes, especially in the recruitment stage. This implied that different messages and channels were used to cater to the main motives sought of each archetype, their concerns about privacy or data sharing or ability to use technologies. Since archetypes were differently represented across countries, the recruitment strategy was consequently adapted to the countries.
iFLEX adjusted its engagement strategy based on the feedback from the end-users. To illustrate, in the pilot deployed in Greece, participants with water boilers, as flexible resource, were the main engagement target at first, however, due to a limited number of such (as many people use solar powered boilers), other heavy-consuming devices and smart plugs, owned by participants, are also considered by the pilot hosts to be included into the project in order to not to lose flexibility assets; a device or other resource that is able to adjust electricity consumption based on network needs.
What kind of barriers and challenges did your project face during end-user engagement? How did you overcome these? What are the challenges you expect to face in the next steps of your project?
ReDREAM faced three main challenges during recruitment. First, the difficulties in locating eligible users, especially in climatic areas where heating is gas operated and PVs/EVs are not widely adopted. This difficulty prompted co-creation exercises to unearth strategies to locate prospects with eligible participants (Valor et al., 2022). Second, given the widespread difficulties in understanding what flexibility entails and given the different regulatory frameworks in each country, end-users find it difficult to understand the benefits of participating in the project by providing flexibility. Thus, recruitment was intermingled with training and education actions. This combination proved effective: once users understand the wider challenges to energy systems in EU, they can see why their role in the energy markets need changing and can become more willing to participate. Finally, each demo location had a different profile of potential prospects. The initial research resulted in the identification of a set of archetypes. These archetypes were found in all demo locations, although the presence of each archetype varied across countries. To illustrate, ReDREAM found more active tech-wary consumers in Spain than in Croatia. Recruitment messages and channels were adapted to cater to these different profiles across demos.
iFLEX challenges in end-user engagement were related to legal and technical aspects. To illustrate the legal aspect: in the pilot deployed in Greece, the end-user invited to participate was not always the legal owner of the apartment. This fact led to a difficulty to obtain the legal consent of the owner.
As for the technical aspect, one challenge faced by iFLEX was ensuring that installed equipment was not altered or removed at end-user premises. For that purpose, iFLEX added additional clauses regarding fair usage of the smart metering equipment, prohibiting unauthorized users from tampering with the installed equipment. As it is a question of liability, clauses were added into the consents with end-users.
Finally, iFLEX also faced technical challenges due to the lack of standardization for semantic and technical interoperability of devices. As a result, iFLEX increased efforts, namely via reverse engineering, to ensure proper technical specifications for communicating with different devices while integrating them to iFLEX backend solution through smart home hubs.
How are you planning to keep your participants engaged throughout the project?
iFLEX is applying different approaches tailored to the pilot site. The first approach is to reward the participant. To illustrate, in the pilot deployed in Finland, a lottery to attract and retain end-users participating and responding to the survey launched is being implemented. In the pilot deployed in Greece a similar approach will be employed: in this scenario, end-users will earn points for participating in demand-response actions (e.g., the more points earnt the more probabilities of winning a prize). The second approach is to offer a special customer package (product) for electricity, offering the end-users the opportunity to pay a lower price for electricity if they participate in the project.
For ACCEPT, the strategy to keep participants engaged is a crucial aspect and it can be really challenging to keep households connected to the project. The project is designed using a technology-driven approach, so households need to wait until technical aspects are finished before they will be contacted again, producing a lack of communication in between these steps. Thus, in order to stress the importance of user engagement, in ACCEPT a User Council will be installed, whose main objective is to restore the trust of the households, and a roadmap for user engagement activities is being designed. Finally, ACCEPT is using living labs (or local workshops) to not only increase the engagement of end-users, but also to promote co-creation, as users will have the opportunity to provide feedback that will help to improve the final product.
Finally, for iFLEX and for ACCEPT, a central approach to participant engagement is to convey closeness, which is being accomplished by constantly communicating with the participants and continuously informing them about the project and their participation status, while providing them with technical support and a clear and identified point of contact in case of enquiries.
Does your project employ any co-creation activities with the end-users? If yes, which are they? Why do you think is important to include co-creation activities in innovation projects? What do you expect to get out of these?
Co-creation is a core process in HESTIA in a twofold manner: i) co-creation activities have been organised with the pilot users in order to actively include them in each step and as a way to get their input on the design of the HESTIA platform; ii) within the consortium, technical, academic, and industrial partners are constantly improving the engagement and platform services through an iterative and continuous feedback-based mechanism. HESTIA’s partners trust that co-creation is fundamental as a way to transition from a passive consumer model to that of active participant involvement in the process of designing DR solutions for households. This also lies on the transition from a passive consumer to a prosumer, which has to be explained in simple and comprehensive terms to non-expert users. Co-creation in the HESTIA project has been used to assist participants in collectively understanding and learning about the purpose of household flexibility and therefore begin the process of collective construction of specific DR solutions for each pilot site. This collective learning process has varied across the pilot sites, since these represent very different characteristics in terms of socioeconomics, culture, housing routine, geography and with regard to capabilities (e.g., digital literacy of participants, infrastructure available etc.). Another important benefit of co-creation is that it is a process which requires the involvement of all relevant stakeholders and, therefore, it contributes to an increased level of participation and engagement in the project through all relevant actors. Through this engagement by connecting and co-locating the actors of a project, the project is enriched with new insights and stakeholders are equipped with new competences required by the energy sector, such as how to improve user consumption and how to design strategies which are relevant to them.
In SENDER, co-creation has been implemented since the beginning of the project. The approach is to consider the point of view of the end-user (user experience), which means trying to demonstrate the practicalities of the technical aspects and how the technology deployed will benefit their everyday life. The user experience is important in order to guide further technology and solutions developments, as it helps to detect what truly matters to the end-user and determine whether what is being created is useful and easy to understand.
For those projects that have been through co-creation activities: A. Did co-creation deliver the insight/knowledge/effect you sought for? And have the efforts been worth it? B. On a scale from 1-10, how much have the users influenced the design of the technical solution(s)?
The HESTIA approach is based on a practice –theoretical perspective in order to explore and explain energy demand response as a component of everyday practices at home. Theories of practice direct the focus of household energy behaviour away from individual users, towards the understanding of more collective everyday consumption activities. By engaging people in collective interactions through co-creation, HESTIA explores the possible ways in which behavioural change inside the house can happen through the parallel shift of several interconnected practices (e.g., shifting the time of the laundry implies a series of linked actions, such as the understanding of householders needs, their availability, their commitments, etc.). Through this basic understanding and review of common practices and the appreciation of social context (e.g., accepted levels of comfort at home), HESTIA approaches the communities in the pilot projects and investigates how these shifts and changes can take place within the frame of participants’ everyday life and routines. The results so far have shown that financial incentives can assist positively towards the desired shifts, however they cannot be the solution that sustains behavioural changes for the longer term. In HESTIA pilots, households prefer to work with their community for common goals, while also valorising financial and environmental benefits.
In SENDER, co-creation is a manner of measure that what is being created is rational and understandable, and it helps to address any objections more easily, as the participants in the demos have been part of the co-creation process. Thus, co-creation is not just a relation between users and providers, but it offers the added value of bringing together all the different solutions with the solutions developers in the project to create a better overview about all aspects to be considered. What it is important in co-creation is not just how much the users influenced the technological solutions, but also the knowledge gained about how the design will perform that was not previously known. In this way, the performance of the technological solution can be improved without necessarily altering the technical design, but rather working on expectation and how to accommodate it in the household.
What are the users' motivations to engage in a DR project or become part of an energy community? Economic/Financial (e.g., energy savings), social (e.g., social/community cohesion), environmental (e.g., sustainability), etc.? Have you identified differences in motivations across your project's pilot sites? Is your project using any incentive mechanisms (rewards or punishments) to engage users (based on their motivations)?
In ReDREAM, it has been corroborated that motivation is multidimensional and that users have manifold and disparate motives for participating in the project. Nonetheless, three main motives or forms of value have been identified as driving interest in participation: i) economic value sought (the main motivation being to obtain a financial reward in the form of payment or billing discount); ii) environmental value sought (the main motivation here is to reduce the carbon emissions associated with their own or collective energy consumption); iii) community value sought (the primary motivation is to foster community resilience and self-sufficiency, and enable an energy transition more attuned to human needs). Two other motives were also detected: iv) identity confirmation (to project or self-confirm an early adopter identity or an environmental identity) v) and epistemic (learning about energy consumption and the new energy landscape that is being built in Europe).
Regarding incentive mechanisms, the ReDREAM ecosystem embeds a gamified approach, and symbolic incentives are provided. These symbolic incentives, in the form of badges, are gained by solving other users’ questions, sharing tips or best practices, or by participating in the challenges (dedicated tasks to achieve an individual or collective objective). Additionally, in countries where explicit flexibility is allowed, users may receive a small compensation for their flexiblilised energy.
As for ACCEPT, energy communities are dynamic entities with memberships that continuously evolve and change depending on intersectional lived experiences of participants (e.g., life stage, social and financial resilience, etc.) that are formed by wider societal constraints and drivers (Lennon et al., 2021). Consequently, it is difficult to identify a single motivating factor impacting the success or failure of a specific energy community or a citizen’s engagement. There are numerous factors that influence local participation in community energy projects, including social, economic, environmental, political factors (Bamberg et al., 2015; Dóci & Vasileiadou, 2015; Kalkbrenner & Roosen, 2016). (The results from an ACCEPT mini survey confirmed many of these motivations. It also revealed new reasons corroborating the rapid evolution of members’ motivations for joining a CEC (Citizen Energy Community).
A main factor driving the engagement in CECs for a mini survey of ACCEPT participants regarding their interest in meaningfully addressing the climate change crisis. Their responses, presented in Lennon et al. (2021), included amongst other things a willingness to use locally available resources and reduce pollution generated locally. As reflected in the wider literature, participants indicated a strong motivation to push the energy transition forward in ways that were seen as being suitably just (Lennon et al., 2019). Findings from the ACCEPT project also highlight a key motivating factor for forming a CEC is in tackling climate change in a meaningful and proactive way, while also securing one’s own energy security. However, until recently the mechanisms to support such actions were not immediately apparent to many. Another significant motivating factor is the fear that the differing governance frameworks energy companies may be subject to in different jurisdictions may result in contrasting levels of service compared to companies operating closer to the customers’ location (Lennon et al., 2021). Consequently, through CECs, people can have their own infrastructure and decide themselves about the way electricity is produced. While it might appear that citizens have generally left it to governments and large energy companies to resolve pressing energy-related environmental problems. This is not usually the case. Rather, citizens often feel locked into energy structures that present them with a false narrative that they somehow have a choice to effect change (Lennon et al., 2020). In addition, trust and confidence in existing energy incumbents to affect a change to a more sustainable and equitable energy system continues to wane.
Another motivating factor for citizens is taking part and learning how to use innovative technologies. Lennon et al., 2021 also mention how one’s personal sense of self can be enhanced by such actions. The potential savings in energy-related costs is another key motivation, especially given the current related energy and cost of living crises. As the authors note “CECs also offer the possibility to ‘participate in development and investment subsidy programmes’, as well as acquiring access to financial mechanisms that facilitate alternative forms of investment” (ibid, p23). Lastly, members are also motivated by have a certain “avant-garde feeling” while participating in a CEC.
How are the users reacting to the potential implementation of energy transition (e.g., implementation of renewable technologies, smart technologies, etc.)? Are they aware of their benefits? Do they want to be involved in choosing which kind of technologies to be installed or not?
In the case of the Spanish Energy Community representative from the ACCEPT project, due to the high electricity prices in Europe, people in Spain are more and more willing to install renewable energy plants in their homes or businesses (Eurostat). In the Spanish case, the community was born as an Energy Coop with zero-emission supply, so people who became coop members were already quite environmentally aware (most already had PV installation for self-consumption or were planning to install one) and hence their understanding of the benefits of the energy transition is quite good. Besides RES, the users are open to the implementation of the Smart technologies, as they provide more information and controllability about the energy behaviour, although, the users require to be informed about what devices are going to be installed as they usually do not want to notice them. Finally, it must be considered that the apps to access to this information must be user-friendly.
For the ACCEPT Dutch Energy Community representative, engaging citizens was not a challenge due to the historical background (e.g., in their neighbourhood the social system was designed like an energy community at the end of last century). Thus, citizens are fully aware of the impact of the energy transition. Furthermore, considering the actual extreme prices for energy (Eurostat), people are willing to implement changes as soon as possible. At the same time, people are very aware of their needs and the type of interference they are willing to accept. Therefore, citizens require to be involved in the decision-making process and the execution process, being able at any time to select the kind of interference in the designing phase and in the implementation phase.
Do you think it would be beneficial to provide a minimum viable product (MVP) to the end-users to keep them engaged during the project, before having a well-defined version of the application interface they will use to look at, for example, their energy consumption?
As an ongoing process, HESTIA’s project partners, especially the ones involved in the user engagement strategy, agree on the fact that it is fundamental to continuously keep users engaged to ensure behavioural change and practices shift can be reached on the long term, with a series of related benefits and co-benefits for the entire community. Apart from typical engagement activities, such as ongoing interactions in the pilots (workshops, focus groups and interviews), HESTIA aims at bringing the engagement process to a more inclusive level of participation by providing the pilot participants with the possibility to try, play with and give feedback on the initial product developed by the project partners, the HESTIA platform. Giving the participants the possibility to contribute to HESTIA platform in its initial version has a twofold possible benefit: i) the participants develop a collective ownership of the platform and therefore feel they need to get more involved in the project, by providing feedback and preferences of the possible features the platform can have in its final version and ii) it provides the developers of the platform with site- specific suggestions and improvements that can be made to make the HESTIA platform customized and attractive to the final users. This strategy is being implemented in the next steps of the project and aims to provide best practices and suggestions for further DR and energy communities projects.
Conclusions
The SP2022 workshop demonstrated that the five European Project have active engagement strategies to recruit and keep engaged on the medium- to long-term with the users involved. Co-creation activities, face-to-face meetings, virtual home tours, provision of information material, participatory workshops, and surveys are activities performed by the responsible partners in the projects. The engagement strategies have been usually organised in different phases and using different tools, related to the timeline of engagement, for improved efficacy. The use of key words and the focus on specific aspects of daily household life have been fundamental to defining these different strategies, personalising them and keeping them updated (especially during the lockdown due to the COVID pandemics). Motivation and eligibility of the final users were central points to take into account in each project to develop engaging recruitment material and messages. In all cases, awareness raising of the participants, especially related to the financial and environmental benefits of being part of an energy community or implement renewable energy technologies, was achieved through these different strategies.
As for the next steps, the sister projects are going to continue collaborating and sharing on-field experiences, with the aim of publishing a whitepaper in the Q1 of 2023. The whitepaper will include summarized information related to the projects efforts in facilitating energy transition through customized engagement strategies throughout the project’s duration, and tips to project developers on how to overcome encountered barriers.
Ethics and consent
Ethical approval and consent were not required
Data availability
No data are associated with this article.
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge their partners from iFLEX project: Louise Birch Riley from In-JeT ApS (communication and dissemination lead); Athanasios Papakonstantinou, from HERON (Greek Pilot Representative); Anne Immonen, from VTT (Finnish Pilot Representative); and Andraž Javernik, from ECE (Slovenian Pilot Representative). From ACCEPT project: Andrea Moser, from EEE (Dissemination Lead); Paul Tobin from Smart Innovation Norway (engagement lead); and Breffni Lennon, from UCC (SSH co-lead). From ReDREAM project: Patrick Rembe from the European Science Communication Institute (ESCI). From HESTIA project: R2M team; Cluster Digital; and Aalborg University, for their active participation during the workshop and their contributions in the content of this document.
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