Rather than focus on household or appliance level disaggregation of energy use in domestic settings, in our recent work we have begun to explore how energy use supports the services of everyday life. Our 'service based' quantification of energy use helps explain dramatic variations in direct energy impact for similar practices, e.g. 2 orders of magnitude between the lowest and highest consuming ways of achieving 'entertainment and IT'. In this talk we reveal the hidden impacts of IT devices due to their emergent uses and increased interconnectedness, and the challenges these pose for us in creating next generation hardware and software for a lower carbon future. Talk from Computing for a sustainable future, Royal Society Workshop, 1:30 pm on Monday 30 September 2013 http://royalsociety.org/events/2013/sustainable-computing/

1. 3000%
“1000%: HIGHS AND LOWS
OF ENTERTAINMENT AND
IT IN THE
HOME”
Adrian Friday
Tuesday, 1 October 13

2. Socio-Digital Sustainability Group
Oliver Bates
Janine Morley
Mike Hazas
Adrian Clear
Adrian Friday
Tuesday, 1 October 13

3. OUTLINE
•
Report on our current work studying energy use in the home
(specifically, shared student accommodation)
•
•
how they are used in practice (energy lets us do stuff);
•
•
how entertainment/media and IT links to energy;
not just energy, but embodied emissions (GhG) due to manufacture
Aim to convince you that
•
we need to design technologies with both of these impacts in mind
Tuesday, 1 October 13

4. Billion&Tonnes&Carbon&
THE CURVE
What role does CS have in this?
Taken from ‘The Burning Question’, Mike Berners-Lee, and Duncan Clark, Profile Books 2013.
Tuesday, 1 October 13

5. WHY MEDIA AND IT AT
HOME?
• The
domestic energy demand of consumer electronics, digital
home media and computing devices is on the rise worldwide
(Chetty, 2008)
• In
the UK, these devices comprise about 25% of the total
domestic electricity demand (Powering the Nation, Defra,
2012)
• Also, something
Tuesday, 1 October 13
we’re well placed to help address...

6. 3 STUDIES, 33 PEOPLE, 23 INTERVIEWS, 191
DEVICES MONITORED (50 NON-IT)
Tuesday, 1 October 13

7. 3
2.5
Yellow
Blue
Red
Green
Power (kW)
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
00:00
03:00
06:00
09:00
12:00
15:00
18:00
21:00
00:00
Time of day
LARGE VARIATION
Whole flat aggregate energy, binned by time of day - yet similar
infrastructure - note the baseline
Tuesday, 1 October 13

8. There is significant variation in energy consumption across
similar homes (Hackett & Lutzenhiser, 1991, Gram-Hanssen,
2010) - due to the practices
WHY IS RED LOW AND BLUE
HIGH?
Tuesday, 1 October 13

9. METHOD
1. Single-point (whole flat) sensing (OWL)
2. 200 x Socket-level sensors (Plugwise)
3. Surveys of appliances and devices
4. Interviews about how they’re used
5. Estimates of embodied emissions due to
manufacturing and transport life-cycle analyses
Tuesday, 1 October 13

10. Embodied
Direct
External Router
Router
Manufacture and
Transport (kg CO2e)
Indirect
Direct Energy
(electricity - kWh)
Manufacture
and Transport
(kg CO2e)
Direct Energy
(electricity kWh)
Content Distribution
Manufacture
and Transport
(kg CO2e)
Laptop
Manufacture and
Transport (kg CO2e)
Direct Energy
(electricity - kWh)
Direct Energy
(electricity kWh)
Data Centre Server
Manufacture
and Transport
(kg CO2e)
Direct Energy
(electricity kWh)
WANT: A TOTAL PICTURE
Inclusive of both energy used, indirect emissions and embodied
emissions
Tuesday, 1 October 13

11. How is domestic energy composed?
Tuesday, 1 October 13

12. A TYPICAL DAY IN BLUE
Electric power (Watts)
5000
Lighting
Refrigeration
Entertainment & IT
Other cooking appliances
Oven
4000
3000
2000
1000
06:00
12:00
18:00
Timestamp
00:00
Repeated patterns of use / habits constitute energy,
need ‘area under the curve’, (c.f. Costanza, 2012);
P.S. IHDs focus on instantaneous load (Strengers, 2011)
Tuesday, 1 October 13

13. LAPTOPS AS SWISS ARMY
KNIFE
• Laptops
(32)/desktops (3)/phones(34!) are commonly used
for multiple simultaneous tasks, often related to different
practices
• Activities
often intertwined. For example, instant messaging,
email, social media (both personal & work)
• laptops
Tuesday, 1 October 13
reported as being on ‘most of the time I’m awake’

14. SIMILAR PRACTICES WITH
SIMILAR MEANINGS
• Quite
often, participants reported watching movies and TV on
their laptops, using DVD, downloads and increasingly VoD “We got a free download thing so now we watch a lot”
•3
participants watched media using a DVD player, Xbox 360
and USB drive (respectively) attached to a ‘large screen TV’
• Laptops
Tuesday, 1 October 13
used also as MP3 players (with optional speakers)

15. MEDIA & CONNECTEDNESS
SPAN DEVICES
• Miranda’s
laptop provided
her with the opportunity to
stream content whilst getting
ready for a night out;
• boredom
• Chloe
• Connectedness
likes to have her
laptop running whilst
watching video on her TV so
she can see any new
messages on Facebook
Tuesday, 1 October 13
and filling time has
resource implications (“first
year I used to play lots of
games”)
and the
opportunities that it
provides, seems to increase
their direct energy
consumption

16. Media & IT was 3.5% to 34% of the whole
flat energy (low 164 to high 4935 Wh, i.e.
30x!) - can we now explain this?
Tuesday, 1 October 13

17. 3095 Wh
4935 Wh
Henry
Desktop (no laptop)
Audio Receiver
2 x Monitors
2 x Hardrives
Router
Matt
Monitor
TV
Stereo
Speakers
Xbox
Video Receiver
Mac mini
Router
USB Hub
2 x External HDD
Airport Express
618 Wh
Ian - 50 inch monitor, Xbox 360, Speakers
263 Wh
Miranda
505 Wh
Callum - Monitor, Valve Amp (audio receiver)
467 Wh
Feng
241 Wh
Rachel - Printer, Phone Charger
- TV, Playstation 3, Speakers,
329 Wh
368 Wh
208 Wh
Chloe - TV, DVD Player, Printer,
Ellie
Phone Charger
Leah - TV, Wii, Phone Charger
Jack - Speakers
Tuesday, 1 October 13
164 Wh

18. Henry
Router, HDD x2 (24h)
Desktop PC, Audio Receiver (11.9 h)
Matt
Mac Mini Server, HDD (2), USB Hub,
Router, Airport Express 24(h)
TV (10)
Monitor
Desktop
Router, HDD (2)
(10.2h)
Xbox
TV
(4h)
Monitor (8 h)
Laptop
Monitor (10h)
ON TIME & CONSTELLATIONS
Satellite devices often on ‘just in case’; hub devices on to enable
practices
Tuesday, 1 October 13

19. But what about the embodied GhG
emissions?
Tuesday, 1 October 13

20. ConstellaRon"(See"Table"2.)"."(Henry)"
Monitor"(50","30kg),"Xbox"360"."(Ian)"
PS3,"TV"32""."(Feng)"
Xbox"360,"TV"19"."(Kate)"
Laptop"
Mac"Mini"Server"."(Ma6)"
Smart"Phone"
Direct"Energy"Converted"to"Carbon"(kg"CO2e)"
Embodied"Emissions"(kg"CO2e)"
Router"."(Henry,"Ma6)"
0"
200"
400"
600"
800"
1000"
1200"
LAPTOPS, TABLETS & PHONES ARE RELATIVELY LOW
IMPACT
In direct energy terms; especially if not in a constellation (see
top row)
Tuesday, 1 October 13

21. But...
Tuesday, 1 October 13

22. THE CLOUD BEGINS WITH COAL, DIGITAL POWER
GROUP, AUGUST 2013.
http://bit.ly/17xDQqD
Tuesday, 1 October 13

23. #
participants
Direct
savings
Improving power management
strategies (Chetty, 2008)
33
2.5%
Longer use and more reuse of
mobile phones etc. (Hanks,
2008), (Huang,2008)
33
Replace desktops with laptops or
low-energy servers
3
9.3%
Replace large constellations with
laptops
2
40%
Longer life systems (e.g. cloud
enabled?)
33
Strategy
Embodied
savings
1.8%
16.0%
?
And the technologies we create get folded in and enable new
practices...
Tuesday, 1 October 13

24. Questions?
a.friday@lancaster.ac.uk
Tuesday, 1 October 13
Funded by the UKRC (grants EP/G008523/1 and EP/I00033X/1).
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/sds