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In order to mitigate climate change effects, urgent action is required in all sectors of the economy to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. On the supply side, Energy System Models (ESMs) have provided useful results, but on the demand side, they lack the degree of accuracy required for proper characterization of the use of energy in households.

WHY is the next step in improving energy demand modelling to forecast the domestic sector’s energy consumption. The WHY project develops innovative methodologies and a toolkit for short- and long-term household energy consumption modelling. Use cases benchmark these models ranging from local to European-wide energy grids. The WHY Toolkit builds on the causality chain to model the energy demand, building on relations between measurable variables.

Are you interested in the details?

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The WHY project is all about improving the knowledge on residential electricity consumption by considering the individuals' behaviours. For that purpose the WHY-Toolkit will be developed, which will be able to interact with existing energy system models or independent of them. While the general idea and functionalities of the WHY-Toolkit are well defined, we had to ask ourselves what requirements the potential users of the Toolkit or the results of the Toolkit will have.

A tool well adapted to the requirements of the users is a tool which will be used. So one of the first tasks in the WHY-project set the focus on the analysis of the stakeholder’s requirements. Following a co-creative approach, the WHY-consortium got in contact with a multitude of different stakeholders.

A total of 63 contacts from over 13 EU member countries were asked to participate in the stakeholder involvement actions. For the stakeholder interaction we defined three methods suited to the background of these stakeholders...

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The objective of the causal model is to understand, in a quantitative manner, the decision-making process that leads a user to consume electricity and his/her reactions to changes in energy policies. In order to determine the types of households that exist in terms of energy consumption, a segmentation of load profiles is currently being carried out. Different data sets of household energy load profiles are currently being analysed using a methodology based on time series feature extraction. Carlos Quesada explains the initial results.

This online event aimed at discussing with invited stakeholders the first results of the WHY and the NewTRENDs projects. Both projects have recently finished their stakeholder consultation and are now in position to share their first insights.  The joint workshop highlighted the set of households-energy behaviour models designed in WHY and  the new societal trends that might impact future energy demand determining the enhancement of the energy demand models in NewTRENDs. 

Members of both projects discussed potential synergies and complementarities between both approaches to set a collaboration roadmap between the projects. Invited stakeholders also assessed the results presented, evaluating the alignment with the policy objectives in order to:

1. detect any missing points and
2. prioritize the development of the components / societal trends selected.

Visit the website for the results!

The electricity tariff structure was due to change in Spain on April 1st 2021. However, in an end-of-february decision, the market regulator decided to postpone the measure until the 1st of June. From that moment, all household consumers will automatically move to a system with three tariff periods.

Spot energy prices spiked in Spain during the cold snap in early January. This was caused by a lack of wind and hence low renewables production, combined with high prices of imported gas and unusually high electricity consumption - both due to the cold wave. As a result of these three factors, consumer prices also soared for those consumers who are in the regulated market system, which operates with dynamic prices linked to the spot market.

WHY is the next step in improving energy demand modelling and predicting household energy consumption. The WHY project develops innovative methodologies and a toolkit for short- and long-term household energy consumption modelling. Use cases benchmark these models ranging from local to European sized energy grids.  To bundle findings and outcomes of projects dealing with energy efficiency and energy consumption as well as modeling energy consumptions to support policies related to energy transition we seek to publish interesting news and articles. We seek articles and news from other projects and inititiatives, as well as by researchers or policy initiatives interested in distributing their results  in an easy-to-understand language.

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