Identifying consumer requirements as an antidote to resistance to smart meters

Energy efficiency has been the primary motivation for the introduction of smart meters. But current smart metering projects are facing barriers to adoption from consumers, arising from the failure of project sponsors to understand consumers and their requirements. Consumers view smart meters with suspicion, perceiving them to be energy suppliers' efforts to maximise their profits at the expense of consumer costs, choice, health and privacy. For emergent systems like automated metering infrastructure (AMI) to avoid battling to convince consumers of their benefits, it is essential to have user-centric analysis performed before expensive infrastructures are designed and deployed. Various categories of consumers will have their own particular perspectives, and different expectations about how the system should help them to appropriately manage their energy usage. Hence it is essential to segment energy consumers and identify the requirements for each group. In this paper we look at a number of user-centric methods. We then analyse the effectiveness of combining Contextual Design (CD), focus groups and problem extraction to provide insights into energy consumer needs. Based on the analysis we outline a functional specification for a smart meter that would satisfy the energy requirements for a segment of electricity consumer with medical needs.