How can we use technology to support households in making decisions about their energy use and the energy transition?
The Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University, together with public and private partners, submitted a research proposal to explore this question. The Dutch Research Council (NWO) approved the proposal, and the project has been running since 2022. In this project, we work closely with households, who are an important player in the energy market.
At the end of 2026, we will complete the research. We will then also look at how we can further develop and share the insights and technologies created in this project. These insights will be used to give recommendations to policymakers and to public and private partners involved.
The public summary is as follows.
Long-term consumer and community empowerment in energy applications through inclusive Game design, Artificial Intelligence and system Modelling (Project acronym: GAIM)
By developing integrated tools as the shared platform between citizens and the energy system, and thus enabling user-centred sustainable energy systems, we envision a future where households play an active role in the energy transition. This requires an interdisciplinary approach and collaboration along the whole energy value chain. Game research will be coupled with advanced modelling techniques and smart meter data, for providing informed and reliable feedback to citizens about optimal energy management in households. The developed tools will be demonstrated and verified in several Dutch municipalities for enhancing energy consumer empowerment which is crucial for a low-carbon energy system.
The scientific summary is as follows.
Scientific summary
Increasing shares of intermittent renewables and targets for greenhouse-gas emissions reduction challenge the reliable and economic operation of energy systems. An effective energy transition requires urgent actions on empowering consumers, enabling demand-side flexibility, and promoting new roles such as prosumers, aggregators and energy communities. Currently, citizens’ engagement in new energy services and products is hindered by energy market regulation, and lack of information, two-way communication and trust with utilities.
We envision learning communities as vital in enabling citizens to conceptualise socio-technical imaginaries of user-centred sustainable and affordable energy systems. We strive for an integrated interdisciplinary approach across humanities, social, natural, and computer sciences, and long-term collaboration between academia, consumers/prosumers, aggregators/suppliers, and energy communities/cooperatives. Results will include both the practical means and instrumental policy recommendations to enhance citizens’ empowerment.
We will develop and demonstrate integrated tools as the shared platform for citizens’ long-term engagement and empowerment in energy applications, through research on persuasive and inclusive serious game design, coupled with artificial intelligence techniques, energy models and input from smart meter data, to provide informed and reliable feedback to citizens about optimal home energy management.
The tools will be co-designed, used and validated in collaboration with Dutch municipalities to enable a wide range of energy-related customer-oriented services, which are crucial for a low-carbon energy system, from increased energy efficiency to flexibility provision for market optimisation and grid services. Our consortium spans expertise and partners along the whole energy value chain, allowing us to identify replicability potential, and result in tailor-made policy recommendations.
Partners of the GAIM project:
- Energie-U
- BeNext
- Municipality of Diemen and Utrecht
- Province of Utrecht and Noord-Holland
- Regionaal Energieloket
- Energie van Utrecht
- Energie van ons
- IJsfontein (game studio)
The core team:
- Ioannis Lampropoulos (project lead)
- Hossein Nasrollahi (PhD candidate – energy systems, demand side management , AI)
- Pepijn Quast (PhD candidate – Empowerment)
- Peter van den Heuvel (facilitator micro learning community)
This project is funded by NWO and runs from 2022 to 2026.
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