Project Overview: Residential thermostats control about 10% of national energy use. In 2008 Energy Star concluded that homes with programmable thermostats were using more energy than homes with manual thermostats. As a result, Energy Star terminated the thermostat endorsement program in 2009 and decided that any future endorsement program must include specifications for minimum levels of usability. HDS Lab Director Cecilia Aragon and her colleagues performed multiple lab and field studies of thermostats and developed an innovative usability metric for thermostats to facilitate energy saving behavior. This metric is currently being evaluated in Energy Star’s draft specifications for programmable thermostats.
Researchers
Marco Pritoni, UC Davis, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, Ph.D. Student
Alan K. Meier, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Cecilia Aragon, University of Washington, Human Centered Design and Engineering, Associate Professor
Daniel Perry, University of Washington, HCDE, PhD Student
Therese Peffer, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Publications
Pritoni, M; Meier, A. K.; Aragon, C.; Perry, D.; Peffer, T. (2015). Energy efficiency and the misuse of programmable thermostats: The effectiveness of crowdsourcing for understanding household behavior. Energy Research & Social Science, 8, 190-197. doi:10.1016/j.erss.2015.06.002
Peffer, T., Perry, D., Pritoni, M., Aragon, C. & Meier. Facilitating energy savings with programmable thermostats: evaluation and guidelines for the thermostat user interface. Ergonomics 56, 3 (2013). doi:10.1080/00140139.2012.718370 PDF.
Peffer, T., Pritoni, M., Meier, A.K., Aragon, C., and Perry, D. How people use thermostats in homes: A review. Building and Environment 46,12 (2011), 2529-2541. doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2011.06.002 PDF
Perry, D., Aragon, C., Meier, A., Peffer, T., and Pritoni, M. Making energy savings easier: Usability metrics for thermostats. Journal of Usability Studies 6, 4 (2011), 226-244 . PDF
Meier, A., Aragon, C., Peffer, T., Perry, D., and Pritoni, M. Usability of residential thermostats: Preliminary investigations. Building and Environment 46, 10 (2011), 1891-1898. doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2011.03.009
Meier, A., Aragon, C., Hurwitz, B., Mujumdar, D., Peffer, T., Perry, D., and Pritoni, M. How people actually use thermostats. In Proceedings of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy Conference, ACEEE (2010). PDF
Media Coverage
Many people have no idea how to use their thermostats — and it’s costing them. Washington Post, July 7, 2015
