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Evening Practices Materiality and Electricity Consumption in France
No full textInternational audienceContinuously matching energy generation and demand in time is at the heart electricsystems because of their very little storage capacity. This balance generally relies on thediversity and flexibility of the power generation that respond to demand. With the rise of smart grids, consumers are also expected to change their behaviours and adapt to the system needs, avoid peak times and absorb energy overcapacities. However, these interventions and injunctions to change behaviour, tend to ignore the nature of the practical arrangements to be changed, the fabric of everyday life as it is today, what people have in their hands, and how it relates to energy consumption. If most researchers agree that knowing demand is about understanding what energy is finallyconsumed for, either focusing on consumers or social practices [1],[2], quantitativeresearches struggle to measure the precise role of consumers actions and daily life in the amount of energy they consume. The study of energy demand diversity and evolutions fails to show any significant relationship between different doings and the variations in energy consumption measured on a large scale [3],[4],[5],[6]. Even if the direct link between the use of specific appliances and their energy consumption can be measured [7], it seems this link blurs into the complexity of the many practices performed over a year or across large samples of consumers, letting only steady infrastructures and shared contingency (i.e. seasons) shape energy demand. More ambitious measurement campaigns involving energy consumption and people activities are currently under way [8], and should help to understand how and where the link between practices and energy consumption gets lost.Understanding households’ practices in the evening is particularly useful because it’swhen electricity demand peaks in several western countries. A specific analysis of thisquestion showed that the peak when the night and the need for lighting overlaps with the first part of the active occupancy, in relation with cooking time. Still little is known of the materiality of the practices happening at that time, only activities being reported innational time use surveys
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Household activities through various lenses: crossing surveys, diaries and electric consumption
Get PDFThe analysis of household energy consumption usually involves the description of technical systems and of people behaviors. This work focuses on the relationship between people activities, appliances use, and electric consumption. It relies on the application of a wide range of measurement tools on a unique sample of 60 households in France. Overall, questionnaires, diaries, and measured consumption provided a consistent description of the intensity and time of use of the three appliances studied. However, variations were found, depending on the indicator and appliance studied. The levels of activity derived from the diaries and consumption show large differences. However, they can be explained based on reasonable assumptions on the differences in the nature of the activities. Most importantly the variations in the intensity of use across households are consistent among the three measurement tools. This result allowed a partial description of the role of the frequency and duration of use, appliances features and energy saving gestures in the final energy consumption. In terms of methodology, this study shows that, questionnaires can provide consistent information on the relative level of energy consumption by household, while diaries provide reliable information about when this energy is consumed, supporting the use of the large scale and wide spread “Time Use Surveys” to model the diversity of power demand in Europe and America
Household activities through various lenses: crossing surveys, diaries and electricity consumption
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Le repas du soir et la pointe de consommation électrique en France: Apports des enquêtes emploi du temps à la mise en relation entre pratique quotidienne et demande d’énergie
No full textInternational audienceDes dispositifs tarifaires et technologiques sont régulièrement développés pour inciter les consommateurs à déplacer leur demande d’électricité en dehors des périodes de pointe. Ces dispositifs sont évalués au travers de leur efficacité globale, masquant la diversité des pratiques quotidiennes sous-jacentes. Nous proposons d’étudier ces pratiques, afin de comprendre les significations et les contraintes qui s’y rattachent, et comment elles pourraient être modifiées.Dans ce travail nous nous intéressons à la pointe quotidienne par une analyse quantitative des activités liées au repas du soir, qui joue un rôle central dans l’organisation du ménage et les consommations d’énergie. L’enjeu de l’étude est également méthodologique puisqu’il s’agit de tenir compte de la complexité des pratiques derrière les consommations d’énergie dans une approche quantitative.Les différentes façons dont le repas est préparé et pris, ont été caractérisées à partir des enquêtes emploi du temps de l’INSEE: moment, participants, lieux, équipements. Puis les activités adjacentes à ces repas ont permis de préciser les contraintes temporelles et les significations associées à chaque type de repas. L’utilisation d’appareils dans le cadre de pratiques situées dans le temps nous renseigne sur leurs contributions respectives à la pointe de consommation, et nous permettent d’envisager les possibles transformations de ces pratiques et leurs conséquences, du fait des interventions tarifaires mais surtout d’évolutions sociales plus profondes
Beyond the attitude-behaviour gap – involvement in direct load control explained by meaningful systems of motivations, routines and housing conditions
No full textInternational audienceAlongside the quest for energy savings, the need for electricity demand management grows in a context where networks have to become smarter to lighten the cost of higher peaks and less flexible generation. The efficiency of this demand management will rely on a good understanding of people’s consumption behaviours and reactions to the signals coming from the system. In this work, the diversity of people reactions is explored based on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of a direct load control field trial involving 473 households. How do people perceive those interventions? How do they change their daily practices? Who accepts the signal and why?This diversity in the energy related gestures is often thought to result directly from people attitudes, especially those toward environmental issues, according to planned behaviour theories. However, many empirical studies reveal a gap between attitudes and behaviours. Various interpretations of this gap can be found from measurement issues, to the strength of unconscious routines; this gap can even be considered irrelevant, like attitudes themselves, when referring to the social practice theory.In this experiment, the causes of the reactions diversity were investigated by means of in depth interviews, observations at home, quantitative surveys and temperature and consumption monitoring. People’s energy projects were described from their motivations to take part in the experiment to the underlying fields of meanings and the antagonisms structuring them: individualism/community, comfort/frugality, transformation/balance, and efficiency/morality. The relationships between households’ attitudes, routines and material environment was first described in the qualitative study before the same structures were searched for in the quantitative data, leading to eight clusters of people showing differentiated reactions to the load shedding signal.As a result, it was possible to describe consistent combinations of attitudes, routines, and housing characteristics that together explain the reactions to the signal. In this model, attitudes play an indirect role on the final behaviour, as part of a complex but intelligible system
PRACTICE HUNTING: Time Use Surveys for a quantification of practices distributions and evolutions
No full textInternational audienceEnergy consumption is often analysed as the outcome of people’s individual choices involving the use of technical devices. But it can also be seen as resource that underpins the energy consuming practices that people perform. The explicit study of practices, defined as clusters of activities, held together by meaning, material embodiment and coherent performance, and shared by a number of carriers across time a space, could improve our ability to model how the related energy consumption builds up and evolves. Practice theory has been successfully applied in the qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews and historical material including in the energy consumption field. However, the application of this theory to more structured and quantitative data remains limited. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how this theory can apply to the analysis of the flow of activities reported through the activity diaries forming national Time Use Surveys. This application would enable the use of these large scale representative population datasets for the modelling of the co-evolution of practices, technologies and infrastructures and consequent domestic energy consumption
People reactions to load shedding signals. Peak pricing and load control experiments
No full textInternational audienceFaced with the challenges of energy transition, governments and private actors have supported, developed and experimented with a number of technical, economic, or social incentives for change in behaviour in the service of objectives of efficiency, flexibility or energy sobriety. These incentives meet the logics of household action. The diversity of reactions to an intervention is often seen as the product of differences in attitudes from one consumer to another, while the difference between attitudes and behaviours is usually explained by the persistence of cognitive biases, unconscious habits or the effects of systems beyond the individual will. In fact, it appears that the articulation of the attitudes, practices and material equipment of households consists of energy projects, although varied, but nevertheless intelligible, giving off both keys to understanding reactions and accompanying avenues of incentives. They shed light on the limited potential for practice transformation and explain why the energy transition does not occur in as unified and coherent a way as public discourse would like
Efficacité et justice des mesures de solidarité énergétique. Une régulation par les professionnels
No full textInternational audienceParce que l’électricité est assimilée à un bien de première nécessité, les personnes disposant de faibles ressources peuvent bénéficier d’aides financières préventives et solliciter, en cas de difficultés de paiement, des aides auprès des services sociaux abondées par les fournisseurs d’énergie. En cas de non-paiement des factures, ces clients désignés comme « démunis » sont alors protégés des mesures de sanction et peuvent bénéficier de mesures d’accompagnement. Demander et obtenir ces mesures d’aide, négocier des délais de paiement pour les sommes restant dues ou éviter la mise en œuvre de restrictions mettent les clients en contact avec de nombreux professionnels. Ces interactions sont souvent perçues comme des ajustements individuels, pouvant apparaître comme un mode d’application variable des procédures en fonction du contexte d’interaction, des caractéristiques sociales des protagonistes, de la relation d’assistance ou des dilemmes associés à l’exercice de l’action administrative. Cette diversité est atténuée par la construction, chez les professionnels, d’une norme morale permettant de traiter de façon juste et opératoire les situations des clients en difficulté. En effet, les demandes sont traitées à l’aune d’un filtre partagé qui conditionne l’accès aux services et leur application. Cette norme contribue à favoriser l’accès aux mesures de solidarité et leur effectivité dans l’optique d’une fluidification du processus de recouvrement des factures, mais aussi d’un traitement de la « misère »
L’engagement dans une expérimentation d’effacement: des motivations aux projets énergétiques des ménages
No full textInternational audienceFace aux enjeux de la transition énergétique, pouvoirs publics et acteurs privés ont soutenu, développé et expérimenté auprès des ménages nombre d’incitations techniques, économiques, ou sociales équipant la recherche de changement des comportements au service d’objectifs d’efficacité, de flexibilité ou de sobriété énergétique. Ces incitations rencontrent les logiques d’action des ménages. La diversité des réactions à une intervention est souvent envisagée comme le produit de différences d’attitudes d’un consommateur à un autre, tandis que l’écart entre attitudes et comportements s’explique généralement par la persistance de biais cognitifs, d’habitudes inconscientes ou d’effets de systèmes échappant à la volonté individuelle. Dans les faits, il apparaît que l’articulation des attitudes, des pratiques et des équipements matériels des ménages compose des projets énergétiques, certes variés, mais néanmoins intelligibles dégageant à la fois des clefs de compréhension des réactions et des pistes d’accompagnement des incitations. Ils éclairent le caractère limité du potentiel de transformation des pratiques et expliquent pourquoi la transition énergétique n’advient pas de manière aussi unifiée et cohérente que les discours publics le souhaiteraient
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