Eliminating Energy Hardship
Healthy home environments for young people are critical to the future wellbeing and sustainability of our communities and cultures. Currently, in New Zealand there are too many young people living in homes that are unhealthy, and in some cases, toxic. Energy for Good will contribute to the elimination of unhealthy home environments through specific projects and general support of the New Zealand Government’s drive to promote healthy homes.
Energy for Good has identified and commenced work on the following projects:
Assistance in forming an energy hardship management focused electricity retailer. Our role is providing experience and knowledge based advice to support a new, not for profit electricity retail business. The primary areas we are assisting are in electricity market rules and operations, electricity price risk management (wholesale spot, nodal prices and hedge/futures and FTR instruments), retailer back office operation requirements, strategic planning. The volunteers we are providing have many decades of experience in electricity markets and retailer operations and functions.
Collection and analysis of data on energy hardship and home performance. The Community Energy Network (CEN) identified that quantities and qualitative data is a valuable asset that can be used to produce evidence based estimates of the extent of the problem (e.g.., number and types of homes at risk of being unhealthy), the solutions available to address the identified issues, and the post treatment performance improvements. The data analysis will also be used to support business cases for funding of future home improvement programmers. Energy for Good is seeking suitably experienced volunteers to assist CEN’s reasources in completing this important work.
Development of a home electricity management system for low income households that primarily focuses on how home performance data, combined with energy pricing information, could be used to enable families to take control of their home environment and better manage energy budgets.
The advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology has the potential to provide people with information in a format which empowers them to make real-time decisions on terms relevant to their lives.
This project proposes to adopt a low cost IoT type solution assembled from existing, readily available technologies and components. The solution will provide families with intuitive interactive control of home energy use and cost in a format that works easily for them.
We envisage developing a home energy management system that allows a family’s budgeting decisions to be made in real-time. For example, an application (app) could provide families with a choice of energy parcels linked to home appliances; a family can choose the parcels that best fits its budget. The app could provide alerts if the family’s choice of parcels is likely to exceed its budget. The app could also provide warnings if the chosen parcels would likely lead to an unsafe home environment.
If you have relevant experience and skills, and are willing to help to eliminate energy hardship initiatives, please contact Energy for Good.