The housing sector has been identified as the sector with the largest potential for energy savings. Yet in spite of great technical progress, a large part of the savings are yet to be realized. The potential of energy savings is primarily related to the residents’ practices, for example higher expectations of comfort, lacking understanding of the building technologies and technologies that are not adapted to user needs. To achieve energy savings, future energy efficient technologies have to meet users' needs to a greater extent and support their practices in a sustainable direction. This requires deeper understanding of different user practices and their relations to energy consumption.
UserTEC is divided into 4 work packages, each with their own purpose:
- WP1 undertakes detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of users' everyday practices and how these relate to the households' energy consumption.
- WP2 analyses the communication about households’ energy consumption between end-users, designers, engineers and architects as well as energy companies and utilities, with a view to enhance the communication between them.
- WP3 develops and tests new user adapted energy efficient building technologies.
- WP4 analyses user involvement in low energy construction processes as well as in energy refurbishment of existing housing with a view to enhance the user involvement in the projects.
Danish Building Research Institute and Aalborg University is leading this project in close collaboration with Oxford University, Cambridge University, Linköping University, Delft University of Technology and the Technical University of Denmark. The project has unique data on household energy consumption which will be analysed by a multidisciplinary research team in collaboration with a large number of major companies, utilities and other key players in the housing sector.