The Chariot Project has developed the Chariot Energy Kit (available here) to support people in managing their energy use. The platform relies on a sensor kit to capture environmental data (such as humidity and temperature), and a visual user interface to interrogate the data for problems, such as damp and cold.
Chariot was a collaboration between researchers at the School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham and the Agents, Complexity and Interactions Group at the University of Southampton, and the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE). CSE is a charity that provides advice, especially to households in fuel poverty – a major societal problem affecting ~4.5M people in the UK alone. Energy advisors suffer from a paucity of data regarding property and lifestyle, inhibiting effective advice.
This project was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC press release), by the Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute, and the EPSRC Impact Accelerator.