E-Knowledge
Energy trading of the future
Partner
Nesta
Role
Product designer
Design researcher
Workshop facilitator
Design team
Sophie-Anne Val
Leo Malins
Noah Albrectsen,
Gabriella Moretti-Miles
Where
Glasgow, UK
Duration
3 months
What?
Product
Energy
Sustainability
AI
Trading
Future world
E-Knowledge is an energy trading platform helping users to trade their energy in a future 2034 world.
This project was a partnership between our team of five final year Product Design students at GSA and Nesta's Collective Intelligence team.
Project timeline
Future of Decision-Making in Energy
A 2034 vision
Our team of five was tasked by Nesta, the UK’s innovation agency for social good, to investigate and design—both analytically and speculatively—the future of collective decision-making in energy systems that benefit both people and the planet over the next ten years. A key focus of our work was exploring how Collective Intelligence can support the energy transition.
Methods
To analyze the current state of energy sustainability and build our vision for a new world, we followed these steps:
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Desk research
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Interviews
-Nesta's collective intelligence team
-Nesta's sustainability team
-Energy experts
-AI experts
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Workshops
-Future World Vision: analysis of our primary and secondary research and creation of the 2034 world vision
-Stakeholder mapping
Examples of some of our research cards
Interviews with sustainability and AI experts
Key takeaways
Energy flexibility and long-term investments
Key takeaways that helped us create our 2034 scenario were as follows:
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Smart meters in households are an excellent tool for making energy usage more flexible. By understanding when and how households use energy, suppliers can strategically plan the release of energy sources at optimal times.
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In the long run, it is more cost-effective for the UK government to subsidize expensive sustainable household equipment (e.g., batteries, solar panels, and heat pumps) to reduce grid pressure than to invest in building additional grid infrastructure.
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An ideal setup for households to become more sustainable and less grid-reliant would include the following:
Based on their ongoing work on their net-zero carbon project, Nesta's sustainability experts provided valuable insights about users that guided the design of my upcoming product. These included:
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Apart from financial incentives, the most effective motivation for citizens to change their energy consumption patterns is ease of use.
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Energy remains an abstract concept that many people find challenging to grasp initially. Common questions from household inhabitants on the topic included:
Our 2034 vision
Driven by energy literacy and citizen empowerment
2024
2034
Based on these research insights, our 2034 scenario became the following:
1. By 2035, eligible households and businesses can apply for the “Green Package” through their local co-ops. This package includes solar panels, a heat pump, a battery, and a smart meter. The government subsidizes this equipment to help alleviate pressure on the existing grid.
2. The heat pump and solar panels enable users to charge their battery without fully relying on the grid, saving money. The heat pump, linked to the smart meter, activates during peak energy prices, reducing grid dependency
at costly times.
This setup allows users to:
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Generate and use their energy
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Generate and store their energy
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Generate and sell their energy
3. In a world where energy is becoming a new form of currency, new behaviors emerge, particularly among teenagers. The practice of storing and trading energy begins to spiral out of control as teenagers unknowingly trade their entire household’s energy.
Concept images illustrating future world phenomena
From this scenario, we crafted the following opportunity statement:
How might we affirm energy literacy to empower users to make informed decisions around their future energy consumption?
E-Knowledge - Design Solution
Nesta's primary requirement for our final design concept was that it needed to leverage their HACID technology to function.
HACID is a hybrid technology that combines human and artificial intelligence by scraping web-based data sources and aggregating them with expert input. It was designed to support complex, open-ended problems, such as those related to energy, by providing multiple suggestions.
Leveraging crowdsourcing through HACID
Energy trading
E-Knowledge is an official government platform involving energy providers and smart meters to aggregate the energy data produced by each citizen’s home.
The app promotes three main goals.
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Energy Comprehension: Helps users understand energy's abstract nature by showing real-time price fluctuations, household energy needs, and effective storage strategies.
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Energy Value: Empowers users to visualize the cost and production of energy, enabling them to profit from surplus energy by trading it back to the grid at optimal times.
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Collective Impact: Demonstrates the broader effect of sustainable energy choices, highlighting individual contributions to neighborhood-level environmental impact.
Different modes
The app accommodates all levels of energy literacy. Users can seamlessly switch between “Expert” and “Discoverer” modes on any screen.
Expert mode offers complex information for advanced users, while Discoverer mode presents data in a simpler format, allowing users to transition to Expert mode as their understanding grows.
Selling (Expert mode screens)
Users are notified when energy prices are high, signaling the best time to sell surplus energy back to the grid for a profit.
The app leverages HACID, combining data from sources like grid energy prices and smart meter consumption patterns. Subscribers to the Green Package who consent to data sharing contribute to HACID’s database, enhancing insights for all users.
Ask our chatbot
(Expert mode screens)
E-Knowledge helps users sell surplus energy back to the grid
in a well-guided and informed way.
For instance, Sean can ask HACID how much energy to sell based on current prices, their energy balance, and typical
consumption patterns.
HACID will analyze aggregated data to provide a recommendation tailored to the household’s needs.
Track your impact (Expert mode screens)
Users can see how their energy habits influence their neighbors, provided those neighbors have the “Green Package.”
For example, using energy at off-peak times and reducing grid pressure could lower energy costs for nearby households.
What if relying more on alternative energy helped your neighbors save 25p per kWh—and you earned rewards for your impact once you reached certain milestones?
Key Learnings
Throughout this whole design process, I learned that:
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This project reaffirmed that as a service designer, I don’t need to be an expert in the subject matter but should focus on engaging experts to extract relevant insights for solving the problem at hand. My interest in energy grew naturally as I gained knowledge through the process.
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Seeking external perspectives, especially from those not deeply involved in a project, is invaluable when feeling stuck or overwhelmed. Expert input, particularly during uncertain moments, provided concrete evidence and real user insights, ensuring my project addressed genuine needs and challenges.
Next steps
In the future, I would like to proceed with the following steps (based on expert input during our final project presentation in London):
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What if the app featured a robot advisor to handle all energy transactions? This would simplify the process, create a new passive income stream for users, and encourage sustained engagement with sustainable behaviors.
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Currently, HACID generates answers based on user queries. What if the app included a feature for community-based answers, similar to Reddit? This would allow users to receive both AI-generated insights tailored to their data and grid prices, as well as community-generated advice based on shared experiences, providing a comprehensive view for decision-making.
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Experts advised caution about nudging all users simultaneously during high energy price periods. Like in finance, if everyone sells energy back to the grid at the same time, prices could drop, leading to poor outcomes. A solution could be using HACID to stagger notifications, prioritizing households strategically for each wave of high prices.