The role of IS in residential energy management

While the increase in worldwide residential energy consumption is a concern, a larger concern is the breakdown of residential energy use which is shifting towards life-style oriented appliances and devices. Life-style appliances and devices drive the biggest growth in residential energy consumption making them a concern requiring intervention, given also that life-styles are behavioural in nature with potential for modification. Previous research involving use of IS in residential energy management has not benefited from new technologies, in particular new information technologies (IT). Thereby, the full potential of information systems (IS) is still not harnessed for residential energy management warranting research into its roles in order to guide design and deployment of IS for improved residential energy consumption. The objective of this research is to study the roles of IS in residential energy management. By providing a clear role of IS in residential energy management, we set the grounds for further research into a framework for the design and deployment of a residential energy management IS in order to improve on residential energy efficiency. The paper commences with a review of the factors contributing to residential energy consumption and also use of IS in residential energy management. The roles of IS in residential energy management are then derived from the functional affordance based on studies into the four areas of residential energy management process, technologies used in residential energy management, actual Implementation of IS for residential energy management and environmental behavioural theories and models. From the research it is found that IS for residential energy management fulfils the overarching IS roles of automating, informating and transforming processes. Of these, a specific key role found is in the channelling of interventions to the residential energy end user in order to modify behaviour towards improved energy efficiency.