A cluster analysis of energy-consuming activities in everyday life

Summary, in English

Flexible consumption in the household sector concerns individuals’ daily choices and the routines that develop in their households. Targeting household-level energy consumption therefore requires an understanding of energy consumption in relation to individual household members’ activity patterns. Individual time-diaries reveal when, for how long and where energy-related activities occur, permitting discussions of the temporal flexibility of these activities. Using multiple time-diaries (n = 6477) from a population reveals differences in activity patterns in larger groups and permits recorded activities to be clustered. Few explorative studies perform cluster analyses of energy-consuming activities in order to examine when and for how long these activities occur. When clustering is done, it is usually based on socio-economic factors, and not on the activities performed in sequence. This paper reports a time-geographically inspired cluster analysis based on when and for how long some activities requiring electricity are performed in the home by individuals in a population. The presented cluster analysis based on activities gives a new perspective to the discussion of flexible users and provides a basis for deeper analyses, for example, of whether activities are moveable in time for individuals, complementing cluster analysis based on other variables.

• Author: Jenny Palm; Kajsa Ellegård; Mattias Hellgren
• Publishing year: 2018-01-02
• Language: English
• Pages: 99-113
• Publication/Series: Building Research and Information
• Volume: 46
• Issue: 1
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2017.1302225
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Topic: Social and Economic Geography
• Keywords: cluster analysis; consumer habits; energy demand; flexible consumption; flexible users; inhabitant activities; plug loads; time-diaries; time-geography
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 0961-3218