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In this case study, we designed a family game to explore whether this could be an effective and fun approach for raising the awareness of family members towards their energy use and, in the long run, to provide an effective tool for affecting their habits regarding sustainable behavior. The design of the family game implemented the metaphor of electricity as flowing liquid, fostered fun experiences and supported competitive and social elements. Dutch families with children, aged 5-11 years, participated in the design and evaluation of theconcept. We obtained valuable insights into the use and understanding of electricity by the families, how the families looked at responsible behaviors around their usage and how a game could integrate into the family context in a fun way.

Modern office buildings are often equipped with automatic systems that turn on the lights if somebody enters a room and turn them off when everybody has left the room. This ensures that users do not leave the lights on during the night and thus avoids wasting energy. For cost reasons, most of these installations do not include any manual user control any more, thereby exposing the user to an autonomously operating, automated lighting system. This can be quite annoying, not only because it does not allow a user to express any preferences, but also because energy is wasted in a forced manner, especially to energy-concerned users who would e.g. like to turn off the lights when the office is illuminated by bright daylight. In this technical note, we investigate the effect of giving back control of the lighting system to the users, focusing on the energy consumption. This was done in 16 offices in HTC34. In some of these offices the lights were replaced with ones that are dimmed automatically under day lighting conditions. After having used the system for one year, it indeed showed that users deliberately contribute significantly to energy efficient lighting: the savings in energy consumption compared to the original fully automatic system was over 30% for the standard non-dimmable lighting and over 50% for the dimmable lighting. We propose to install a manual override switch in those rooms that receive enough natural light and that currently have a fully presence-based automatic system installed. The estimated payback period is about four years. It is not necessary to replace the lights themselves: although the use of dimmable lights has shown even greater savings, it has a much longer payback time because of the high installation costs. Apart from a financial incentive, installing these switches is beneficial for the “green” image of the campus and empowers people to contribute to this.