An IoT integrated tool to enhance user awareness on energy consumption in residential buildings

Unaware behaviors of occupants can affect energy consumption even more than incorrect installations and building envelope inefficiencies, with significant overconsumptions widely documented. Real time data and an effective and frequent billing of actual consumptions are required to reach an adequate awareness of energy consumption. From this point of view, the European Directive 2012/27/EU already imposed the use of metering and sub-metering systems, setting the minimum criteria for billing and related information based on real energy consumption data. To assess the ability of buildings to exploit new information and communication technologies (ICT) and sensitize both landlords and tenants to related savings, the new European Directive 2018/844/EU promotes the use of a smart readiness indicator. At the same time, basic information about indoor thermal comfort should be also gathered, aimed at avoiding that an excessive saving tendency can determine the onset of issues related to excessively low internal temperatures. In this paper, the authors address the problem of gathering, processing, and transmitting energy consumption and basic indoor air temperature data in the framework of an Internet of Things (IoT) integrated tool aimed at increasing residential user awareness through the use of consumption and benchmark indexes. Two case-studies in which thermal and electrical energy monitoring systems have been tested are presented and discussed. Finally, the suitability of the communication of energy consumption in terms of temporal, spatial, and typological aggregation has been evaluated.