Benchmarking household electricity use based on Belgian Time-use research

In Europe, approximately 40% of all energy is consumed in buildings. During the last decade, governments have developed energy performance legislations that focus mainly on building related aspects such as the insulation level or the technical installations, allowing them to objectively compare buildings. The influence of user behaviour on the energy consumption is often neglected, although the large spread on energy consumption of similar dwellings suggests that the energy consumption highly depends on user behaviour.

In order decrease the actual energy use, consumers should be informed about the impact of their behaviour on their energy use. Recently, researchers have investigated ways of changing behaviour through advice, audits, feedback, etc. Some important aspects coming forward are benchmarking and providing sufficiently personalized and comprehendible advice. Often, insufficient data is available to benchmark households against an appropriate comparison group.

In this research, a set of benchmarking data is generated based on Belgian time-use surveys. A stochastic model is presented that generates household energy use patterns based on the reported activities of the individual household members. The model was calibrated with an extensive Belgian time-use survey describing the activities and whereabouts of household members with a time resolution of 10 minutes, combined with socio-demographic data of the corresponding households. The model converts activities into energy use, resulting in detailed energy use patterns that allow conclusions about the energy use on a global level as well as on an appliance level. The model allows to distinguish between specific groups of households, for example based on the household composition, household income or dwelling type. Data from the model could enable energy auditors to benchmark measured household energy use, and provide individualized advice based on the actual household behaviour.