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European End-Users Level of Energy Consumption

and Attitude Toward Smart Homes: A Case Study of
Residential Sectors in Austria and Italy
a

Tamer Khatib , Andrea Monacchi , Wilfried Elmenreich , Dominik Egarter , Salvatore

b

DAlessandro & Andrea M. Tonello

Institute of Networked & Embedded Systems/Lakeside Labs, Alpen-Adria-Universitt

Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria
b

WiTiKee s.r.l., Udine, Italy

Published online: 17 Dec 2014.

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To cite this article: Tamer Khatib, Andrea Monacchi, Wilfried Elmenreich, Dominik Egarter, Salvatore DAlessandro &
Andrea M. Tonello (2014) European End-Users Level of Energy Consumption and Attitude Toward Smart Homes: A Case
Study of Residential Sectors in Austria and Italy, Energy Technology & Policy: An Open Access Journal, 1:1, 97-105, DOI:
10.1080/23317000.2014.977406
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Energy Technology & Policy (2014) 1, 97105

Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 2331-7000 online
DOI: 10.1080/23317000.2014.977406

European End-Users Level of Energy Consumption and Attitude

Toward Smart Homes: A Case Study of Residential Sectors in
Austria and Italy
TAMER KHATIB1 *, ANDREA MONACCHI1, WILFRIED ELMENREICH1, DOMINIK EGARTER1, SALVATORE DALESSANDRO2,
and ANDREA M. TONELLO2
1

Institute of Networked & Embedded Systems/Lakeside Labs, Alpen-Adria-Universitt Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria
WiTiKee s.r.l., Udine, Italy

Downloaded by [92.36.190.82] at 00:52 02 September 2015

Received September 2014, Accepted October 2014

Abstract: This article presents a quantitative assessment of the level of energy consumption of inhabitants located in Carinthia and
Friuli-Venezia Giulia. In addition, an analysis for the current structural barriers for smart powered homes and smart energy management
systems is conducted. A questionnaire consisting of 43 questions is used to address the aforementioned issues. In particular, a sample size of
385 respondents with a confidence of 95% and marginal error of 5% is found to be representative of the adopted area. Based on the results,
we modeled the average energy consumption of a typical 110 m2 area household with 16.8 kWh/day, a 2.6 kW peak, and a load factor of
27%. Furthermore, an average of 46% of the respondents expressed the willingness to exploit tariff systems for operating their electrical
appliances, and about two thirds of the respondents declared that they care about the energy efficiency at their households. However, low
renewable energy utilization is observed due to some existing structural barriers. Therefore, an analysis and a discussion are carried out to
investigate these barriers. Finally, some recommendations are provided according to the obtained results.
Keywords: Energy consumption level, smart energy management system, feed-in tariff

1. Introduction
Carbon dioxide emission problems encouraged researchers
and governments to investigate smart homes, which utilize
sustainable energy sources at a high level of energy efficiency together with a smart energy management system (EMS).
Smart homes are renewable energypowered homes that exploit
computer-based technologies to control a homes electrical appliances. Such systems can range from simple remote controlling
of lighting and other simple loads to complex micro-controllerbased networks with different levels of automation and intelligence. Smart homes are promoted for reasons of energy security
and efficiency.1,2,3

Tamer Khatib, Andrea Monacchi, Wilfried Elmenreich, Dominik

Egarter, Salvatore DAlessandro, and Andrea M. Tonello
This is an Open Access article. Non-commercial re-use, distribution,
and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in
any way, is permitted. The moral rights of the named author(s) have
been asserted.
*Address correspondence to: Tamer Khatib, Institute of Networked
& Embedded Systems/Lakeside Labs, Alpen-Adria-Universitt
Klagenfurt, Khevenhullerstabe 35, Klagenfurt 9020, Austria. Email:
[email protected]

The share of renewable energies in 2007 in Austria was about

25%.1 However, three quarters of the demanded energy is by
conventional energy sources. Due to the lack of oil resources,
Austria brings about 70% of the needed oil by imports. Hence, a
reduction of fossil fuel imports is an important goal in Austria.
EU member states are supposed to save 1% of their final energy
use per year through energy efficiency improvements by 2016.2
Moreover, overall energy efficiency should be improved by 20%
until 2020 as required by the Europe 2020 strategy. The Europe
2020 renewable energy strategy aims to be the start of the transition to renewable and sustainable energy. In general, the aims of
this strategy are to limit the contribution of conventional energy,
to improve the greenhouse gas performance of biofuel production
processes, to encourage a greater market penetration of low carbon technologies, and to improve the reporting of greenhouse gas
emissions by obliging member states. In 2009 in Austria, residential heating was considered the biggest energy end-use category,
causing three quarters of private households energy use and 18%
of total final energy use.2 Bittermann4 depicts that for a residential load in Austria, 40% of the total energy consumption
is utilized for thermal systems, including water heating (16%),
space heating (14%), and cooking (10%). In addition, cooling
systems, including refrigerators and freezers, account for 12% of
the total demanded energy. Meanwhile, lighting, consumer electronics, other large household appliances, small appliances, and
standby modes account for 8%, 7%, 9%, 4%, 4% of the total

Downloaded by [92.36.190.82] at 00:52 02 September 2015

98
demand, respectively. Households in rural areas such as Carinthia
consume 21% more energy than urban regions such as Vienna.
Furthermore, the costs of energy for water heating and space
heating in rural areas are 106% and 172%, respectively, of the
average amount in urban cities, such as Vienna.4 These statements are further supported5 where space heating, cooling, and
water heating is considered the second largest share of the energy
consumed in Austria in 2008.
In Italy, the total electrical energy consumption in 2009 was
about 320 TWh, while the total energy production was about
275 TWh.6 Furthermore, it is reported that Italy uses mainly oil
(16%), gas (50.7%), and coal (16.8%) for electricity production;
all of these resources are imported.7 Moreover, Italy is currently
buying electricity from other countries to supply 2% of its total
energy demand.8 Aste9 depicts that the Italian residential sector,
as a part of the European residential sector, is responsible for 40%
of the final energy consumption. Therefore, the building sector
has a very high potential in terms of reducing consumption. Italy,
as a member of the European Union, committed to have at least
20% of the overall gross final energy consumption coming from
renewable sources by 2020.9
However, before enforcing energy efficiency and smart home
acts, the gap between energy users represented by the public,
energy producers, and the government and energy efficiency
needs to be studied. To this end, it is important to let the citizens be aware of the detailed energy consumption in their
households.1 Smart homes and energy efficiency technologies
are challenging due to many gaps and wrong practices. In this
context, the INTERREG-IV Italy-Austria program through the
European regional development fund (ERDF) and national public
resources have co-funded the MONERGY research project (ICT
solutions for energy saving in Smart Homes). The project focuses
on measuring the attitude of the public toward energy-efficient
technologies, on increasing public awareness regarding energyefficient technologies, and on developing innovative solutions
that will have an impact on the reduction of energy consumption
in Friuli-Venezia Giulia (IT) and Carinthia (AT) households.
The main objectives of this article are, first, to estimate the
level of energy consumption in the homes of the studied areas by
collecting information about the available electrical appliances
and, second, to measure the attitude of the end user toward a
smart home concept and the adoption of smart EMSs. Finally,
we analyzed the reasons that may cause a gap for the adoption of
EMSs by the end-users and for the inefficient management of the
energy resource.

2. The Questionnaire
Carinthia is the southernmost Austrian state. Located within
the Eastern Alps, the largest metropolitan area consists mostly
of the Klagenfurt basin. The Carnic Alps and the Karawanks
make up the border to the Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia
(Friuli-VG) and Slovenia. The population of Carinthia is about
558,300 with a density of 59 inhabitants per km2 . The other
region observed, Friuli-VG, is one of the 20 regions of Italy. It has
an area of 7,858 km2 and about 1.2 million inhabitants.
In this research, a questionnaire consisting of 43 questions
was developed. The questions were formulated to study the

T. Khatib et al.
characteristics of households, type of devices/appliances, and
end-user behavior. The targeted sample consists of people who
are older than 18 years and who live in the considered regions.
The survey was offered in two languagesItalian and German
in order to address the native language of the majority in
both regions. A sample of the survey can be found online at
http://tinyurl.com/questionnaire-monergy.11 In order to have a
random sample of the participants and to ensure a wide and
balanced distribution of the respondents, the survey was simultaneously announced via mailing lists that include addresses for
employees, students, companies members, and other inhabitants
across the two regions.
The research sample plays a major role to ensure the validity of any study. The research sample size is influenced by a
number of factors, including the purpose of the study, the total
population size, the desired statistical precision and the accepted
sampling error, and the limitations of the study. The volume of a
representative sample (S) can be given by12
S=

x2 NP (1 P)
d 2 (N 1) + x2 P (1 P)

(1)

where N is the size of the population; P is the ratio of the

population and it is estimated to be 0.5 to give the maximum
sample size. The parameter d is extracted from a chi-square distribution with 1 degree of freedom at the desired confidence
level (3.841).
Krejcie and Morgan12 provide a supporting table based on
Equation 1 to be used for obtaining the size of the representative
sample. The table includes the population size and the corresponding sample size that should be selected from it. Following
that, the representative sample size must be about 385 with a
confidence level of 95% and a marginal error of 5% as the
total number of inhabitants in the case study is about 1.7 million. By analyzing the responses obtained, we found that more
than 70% of these responses were from the cities of Klagenfurt
and Udine, which together have a population of 200,000 inhabitants. In this research, we addressed households with two to three
inhabitants. Therefore, considering these two important aspects,
the representative sample size will have a higher confidence level
and a lower marginal error.
The aim of this article is to measure the level of energy
consumption using the end-user feedback. In addition to that,
the article aims to analyze the behavioral and structural barriers that contribute to the gap between the energy efficiency
and the public. Therefore, the following research questions are
formulated:
Q1: What is Carinthia and Friuli-VG citizens level of energy
consumption?
Q2: What is the Carinthia and Friuli-VG citizens attitude
toward the smart home concept and the energy management systems?

We approach the aforementioned questions by investigating

different aspects as illustrated in Table 1. In order to answer the
first research question, we asked for information about the availability of some electrical appliances, some related behavioral
practices, and information about the electricity bill. Furthermore,
to measure the attitude toward the adoption and usage of

European End-Users Level of Energy Consumption

Table 1. Aspects used to answer the stated research questions.

Table 2. Survey demographic data.

Research
question

Demographic variable

Q1

Q2

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99

Variables
1. Laundry times per month
2. Use of dishwasher, drier, washing machine
3. Presence of electric hob
4. Presence of electric oven
5. Number of consumer electronic devices
6. Habit to leave devices in standby
7. Use of electrical heaters
8. Number of air conditioning units
9. Use of air conditioner during summer
10. Number of electric boilers
11. Average monthly energy bill
1. Knowledge of home automation (HA)
2. Ownership of HA system
3. Willingness to purchase
4. Usefulness of energy awareness
5. Switched to energy-saving light bulbs
6. Habit to leave lights on with no one
7. Replaced devices in the last 4 years
8. Devices used in lower-price periods
9. Devices used in lower-demand periods
10. Absence of tariffs promoting energy shifting
11. Presence of RE system (PV, wind, geothermal,
or SWH)

smart home energy management systems, some questions about

awareness, positive actions, existing policies, and beliefs were
formulated.

3. Questionnaire Results
In this research, 397 responses were received. However, these
data were screened in order to remove any anomalies or inconsistencies. For example, the number of floors with respect to
the household size was cross-checked. After that, 340 valid
responses were obtained, with a completion rate of 85.64%. This
sample size is acceptable as a representative sample size compared to the theoretical representative simple size (385). As for
the demographic balance of the sample, 193 responses were
received from Carinthia, while 139 responses were from FriuliVG (1.34:1). Furthermore, 167 responses were sent by females
from both regions, while 166 responses were sent by males
(1:1.04). Table 2 shows a detailed demographic analysis of the
conducted survey.
In this research, we applied a duplicating questions policy
by rephrasing certain questions in order to check some critical aspects. Moreover, anonymity was ensured, and it was also
ensured that the questionnaire was not filed more than once.
A preliminary analysis of the proposed survey is previously
conducted in Monacchi et al.11 This analysis includes principal
component analysis giving a good overview of the dataset by the
biplot produced as shown in Figure 1.
From the figure, Carinithians use of electric hobs, heaters,
and boilers accounts for a greater share of their energy profile

Location
Gender
Female
Male
Age
1835
3645
4665
>65
Education
School
Bachelors
Masters
PhD
Other

Carinthia

Friuli-VG

59.0%

41.0%

52.0%
48.0%

45.0%
55.0%

37.1%
29.6%
31.2%
2.1%

59.7%
17.3%
20.1%
2.9%

25.3%
4.8%
35.5%
29.0%
5.4%

37.4%
7.2%
38.1%
14.4%
2.9%

being accounted for by these devices, but this is less apparent in

Friuli-VG, as a greater proportion of residents use gas-powered
devices. On the other hand, people from Friuli tend to have more
air conditioners. In Carinthia, certain households use a night
meter to manage the main electrical boiler using a cheaper tariff. Given a confidence level of 95%, the Spearmans for the
number of residents and the average monthly electricity bill is
0.408 for Friuli and 0.308 for Carinthia.11

3.1 Q1: What Is the Carinthia and Friuli-VG Citizen

Consumption Level of Energy?
In order to address this question, the respondent was asked about
11 issues as illustrated in Table 3. However, considering the fact
that heating devices are the most energy-consuming devices,13,14
we focused on this issue by asking the respondent to provide
information on the heating systems that are used in houses.
Table 3 shows the results obtained regarding the type of energy
sources used in space and water heating. It is worth mentioning
that some of the respondents utilize two types or even more of
energy sources for space and water heating.
From Table 3, it is clear that few people in both zones use
electricity for space heating. However, in Carinthia, 41.4% of
the respondents use electricity for water heating. In addition, the
respondents were asked about the adoption of air conditioning
units at homes as well as the frequency of using these units.
According to the data, only 2.16% of the Carinthian respondents
have air conditioning units at home with an average of one device
per home and a usage frequency of two times per day. In FriuliVG, 45.19% of the respondents have air conditioning units with
two devices per home and a usage frequency of two times per day.
In order to estimate the average consumption of a home, the
respondents were asked to list their existing appliances, so that
the consumption of these appliances can be estimated. Table 4
shows the results obtained from the survey. The average operating hours and average rated power records are according to Basu
et al. and Tewolde et al.13,14

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100

T. Khatib et al.

Fig. 1. Biplot of the principal component analysis applied to the conducted survey.11

Table 4. House electric energy audit.

Table 3. Energy sources used for space and water heating.

Energy source

Carinthia

Electricity
Gas
Gasoline
Wood/pellet
Solar power
Geothermal

Space heating
10.2%
39.8%
21.5%
18.8%
2.7%
7.0%

6.5%
63.3%
8.6%
18.7%
2.9%
0.0%

Electricity
Gas
Gasoline
Wood/pellet
Solar power
Geothermal

Water heating
41.4%
24.7%
22.0%
13.0%
15.6%
7.5%

12.2%
82.0%
6.5%
3.5%
13.0%
0.0%

On average, the electricity price in Austria is 0.155 C/kWh.

Italy has a multi-tariff system that starts with a tariff of
0.129 C/kWh for a consumption up to 900 kWh per month.
The tariff increases up to 0.314 C/kWh with consumption above
4440 kWh per month. In order to estimate the monthly bill, the
data in Table 4 can be used to calculate the average monthly consumption. Then the monthly bill can be estimated considering
the aforementioned prices. In our further analysis, only appliances with a presence in more than 50% of the households are
considered.
In order to generalize a daily load demand, a prediction of
human behavior is required. Due to the extreme difficulty in predicting such a variable, some intuitive roles can be applied for
the usage time of the listed appliances as given in Table 4. For
example, the refrigerator and the freezer are assumed to be operated periodically considering the typical operation time. Oven,
hob, hood, and microwave oven are assumed to be operated at

Refrigerator
Electrical oven
Electrical hob
Freezer
Microwave
oven
Hood
Dishwasher
Washing
machine
Dryer
Iron
TV
Computer
Cordless phone
Air conditioner
Printer
DVD player
HiFi stereo
Home theater
Game console

Typical
operating
hours per
month

Carinthia

Friuli-VG

Typical
rating
power
[W]

98.9%
100.0%
98.4%
40.9%
60.8%

99.3%
88.0%
5.2%
27.3%
61.2%

150
2,400
950
400
1,500

300
10
60
300
11

69.9%
85.0%
92.5%

82.7%
68.4%
87.1%

450
1350
450

60
25
17

28.0%
74.7%
85.5%
96.2%
31.7%
2.2%
73.1%
69.4%
63.4%
7.5%
34.4%

5.8%
77.0%
89.2%
97.8%
66.9%
45.2%
79.9%
69.8%
54.0%
13.0%
28.1%

3000
800
190
300
70
1,500
50
400
1000
1000
200

17
5
180
75
10
200
5
60
40
180
60

Friuli-VG

breakfast and dinner times only. Appliances for laundry, dishwashing, and similar activities are assumed to be operated in the
evening. Finally, some other devices such as televisions, computers, and air conditioners are assumed to be operated at different
times such as late morning, in the afternoon, and mainly in the
evening. Statistical models presented in the literature14,15 have
been utilized in generating an estimated load demand. Figure 2
shows an estimated daily load demand for both zones. The load

European End-Users Level of Energy Consumption

101

3000

2500

Loads peak: 2.6 kW

Total demand: 16.8 kWh/day
Load factor: 27%

Power (Watt)

2000

1500

1000

500

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10

12
14
Time (Hour)

16

18

20

22

24

Fig. 2. Predicted daily load demand for Carinthia and Friuli-VG households.

demand has a daily consumption of 16.8 kWh, peak power of

2.6 kW, and load factor of 27%. According to the survey, the average area of the households is 110 sqm with average inhabitants
of 2.6 persons. The register-based census 2011 from Statistik
Austria yields an average size of 98.7 sqm for Carinthia with an
average of 43.2 sqm per person. Thus, in our survey we have a
slight bias toward larger households with more people in them.
As a result of our survey, the average energy monthly consumption accounts for 4.6 kWh/(sqm month) or 197 kWh/(inhabitant
month). For comparison, Statistik Austria reports on 2011 a value
of 2050 kWh/inhabitant annually, yielding 170 kWh/(inhabitant
month).3,15
According to the aforementioned electricity prices, the
expected amount of the electricity monthly bill is C8.12 and
C65 in Carinthia and Friuli-VG, respectively. This result matches
closely the average amounts of the electricity bill declared by the
respondents, which are C71.4 and C76.4 in Carinthia and FriuliVG, respectively. In other words, the collected information by
the respondents can be used to generalize a daily load demand
as both amounts (expected and declared) are close to each other.
However, it is of high importance to derive a more accurate load
demand model based on actual measurements.
To this end, a part of the MONERGY research activity is dedicated to a measurement campaign for eight selected households
located in Carinthia (AT) and Friuli-VG (IT). These households
are monitored continuously for a one-year period. In particular,
four households are currently monitored across the province of
Udine (Italy) and four more households in the area of Klagenfurt
(Austria). The dataset will be used in future research work to
develop a model for energy demand in these regions. Online
monitoring can be seen using the following link (http://tinyurl.
com/monergy-campaign). An example for one of the monitored
houses is illustrated in Figure 3. From the figure, the average consumption of this house is about 14.8 kWh day, indicating that the
proposed load demand can be used as a typical load demand for
the adopted case study.

Fig. 3. Load demand example for one of the monitored houses in

MONERGY project.

3.2 Q2: What Is Carinthia and Friuli-VG Citizens Attitude

Toward the Smart Home Concept and the Energy
Management Systems?
In this part of the survey, we measured the attitude of citizens toward the deployment and use of energy management
systems. According to the results, inhabitants from Carinthia
expressed the willingness to exploit this kind of tariff for
operating the washing machine (48%), the electrical boiler
(23%), and the dryer (20%). 67.20% of users from Carinthia
declared to have replaced an electrical device with a more
energy-efficient one during the last 4 years to reduce the consumption at home. Among those, energy-efficient light bulbs
(51%), washing machines (32%), televisions (19.89%), electrical hobs (15%), refrigerators (13.44%), and dryers (9.14%)
account for most of replacements. Households of Friuli usually can exploit multiple pricing conditions. Users declared
they considered the current cost of electricity when using their
washing machine (62.59%), lights (24.46%), iron (22.3%), electric oven (21.58%), dryer (10.79%), conditioner (10.07%), and
dishwasher (9.35%). Similarly to Carinthia, lights (38.85%),

102
washing machines (17.99%), and televisions (9.35%) are the
most replaced devices with more efficient ones.
In general, low renewable energy utilization was observed
in particular, a very low penetration of geothermal heating. The
number of photovoltaic systems in Friuli is higher than Carinthia,
with a percentage of penetration equal to 7.91% and 2.69%,
respectively. The situation is opposite when looking at the solarthermal heating, accounting for 16.67% in Carinthia and 13.67%
in Friuli deployment.

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4. Discussion and Recommendations

Based on the results of both research questions, we can conclude
that the citizens who live in Carinthia and Friuli-VG households
typically have comparably high energy consumption for space
heating at high energy prices. Consequently, some citizens are
motivated to deal with multi-tariff systems or to consider energysaving devices. However, only a minor part of them are actually
willing to deal with smart homes energy management systems
or smart-powered homes.
In general, smart home and energy efficiency gaps are
attributed to low public awareness and market and policy failures. Therefore, understanding the public attitude, for example, is
extremely important to propose suitable technical decisions and
governmental policies. In Hirst and Brown16 and Attari et al.,17
the authors concluded that there are mainly two reasons for the
gap between the public and smart homes and energy efficiency:
behavioral and structural barriers. The behavior and the practice
of the public and private organizations is the reason for the structural barrier, while the individual energy end-user is less responsible for that. An example of this kind of barrier is fuel price
uncertainty. Fuel prices are typically fluctuating, which gives a
very fuzzy image about future fuel prices. This situation actually
prevents consumers from investing in new energy technologies
such as smart homes. In addition to the potential price subsidization and fluctuation, high costs of energy-efficient technologies
are considered one of the most important causes of low energy
efficiency. Moreover, the current policy of applying high discount
rates to make tradeoffs between the initial investment and savings
also prevents the customer from any investment in energyefficient technologies. On the other hand, approved government
policies are one of the structural reasons for the energy efficiency
gap. The applied government policies usually encourage energy
consumption rather than energy efficiency as the profit of selling
the electricity, for example, is a function of government income.
The lack of the technical standards behind technology development is considered a structural barrier that prevents the consumer
from any investment in EMSs.16 Furthermore, there are many
factors that restrict the deployment of energy-efficient technologies such as infrastructure, geography, and human resources.
Regarding the behavioral barriers, they can be defined as negative characterization of the end-user decision-making relating
to energy consumption. There are many reasons for this negative
decision-making characterization of the end user, such as enduser attitude toward smart homes and energy efficiency. Better
awareness of smart homes and energy efficiency leads to a positive attitude toward these technologies and, consequently, could
greatly affect their energy-related consumption and purchase

T. Khatib et al.
behaviors. However, the risk of smart home investments is considered one of the behavioral barriers. In fact, the fluctuation
of fuel prices and current high discount rates for conventional
energy systems operating costs have made smart home investments risky for many of the end users. Furthermore, the lack of
the nontechnical information about these systems caused some
negative attitudes with the consumers. Nontechnical information
on systems feasibility and reliability may greatly encourage consumers to change their energy consumption behavior. In addition
to the lack of information, misplaced incentives is considered one
the behavioral barriers. The most classical example for misplaced
incentives for PV investment is the landlordtenant relationship.
In fact, decisions about the energy features of a building are often
made by people who will not be responsible for the energy bills.
For example, landlords often buy the air conditioning equipment
and major appliances, while the tenant pays the electricity bill.
As a result, the landlord is not generally rewarded for investing in
energy efficiency. Conversely, when the landlord pays the utility
bills, the tenants are typically not motivated to use energy wisely.
As a result, tenants have no incentive to install efficient measures
benefiting the landlord, and the landlord has little incentive to
invest in measures that benefit the tenant. Additionally, the lack
of life-cycle thinking on costs and savings has imposed barriers
for energy conservation.
4.1 Smart-Powered Home Feasibility and Current Structural
Barriers
In general, the adopted case study does not have high solar energy
potential, but it is still acceptable for smart-powered homes by
photovoltaic (PV) system. In Klagenfurt, for example, the average daily solar energy received by a horizontal surface with an
area of 1 m2 is 3.43 kWh. This means that a domestic PV system
with a 5 kWp PV array may produce 16 kWh in average per day.
However, according to the predicted load demand illustrated in
Figure 1, about 9 kWh are consumed during the daytime only.
This is to say that the reaming energy generated by PV should
be utilized in the nighttime to mitigate the peak power as well
as the energy consumption. To store the excess energy produced
by the proposed PV system, a battery unit with a capacity of
180Ah/48V is required. The battery must be able to inject currents of up to 30 Amp in order to meet the required power peak at
some points. For such a system is able to power about 90% of the
load demand with an availability rate of 85%.18 The cost of this
system is mainly given by the cost of the PV array, batteries, and
other power conditioning and mounting stuff. Considering the
current prices of PV systems, such a system may cost C10,000
+ 20% sales tax. In this case, the customer will save up to
90% of the consumed energy, which means C91.8 per month or
C1,101.6 per year. Consequently, the expected payback period of
such an investment is about 11 years.
There are many avoidable causes for this long payback period.
The sales taxto start withincreases the payback period two
years. In addition, the storage unit capital and replacement price
also contributes negatively to the payback period. It is assumed
that the customer can act as a prosumer (producer and consumer),
whereas he is only able to utilize the energy generated by the
system in the daytime and to sell the excess energy directly to
the grid without the need to store it. This option reduces the

103

600
400

Installed Plants

200
0

/kWh

0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0

30
Total Produced Power

Installed Power

20
10

[TWh]

20
15
10
5
0

[GW]

[Thousands]

European End-Users Level of Energy Consumption

0
Incentives

[kW]

60
40
20
0

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Average Power per Plant

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

Fig. 4. Photovoltaic system investment status in Italy in the period between 2007 and 2013.

payback time by up to 1.5 years. However, an acceptable payback

period should not exceed 5 years for such an investment in order
to encourage the people to go with it. Feed-in tariff policies
may address this point by applying good retail prices for the
energy generated from PV for a specific period. For example, the
payback period will be reduced by one year if the utilities decided
to buy the energy units generated by PV systems in the first two
years at 140% of the energy price they sell to the customer.
Italy, to start with, is the country in Europe with the second
highest energy production from PV plants.19 So far, about 18 GW
of nominal power of PV plants have been installed. Figure 4
shows the PV investment status in Italy. The first two plots from
the top of the figure, respectively, depict the evolution of the number of total installed PV plants and the correspondent nominal
power. As it can be seen, these two curves increase exponentially between 2008 and 2012. Such behavior arises from a series
of energy incentive programs that have been promoted by the
Italian government. In particular, five different decrees have been
issued in the years 20072012. These five decrees can be simplified in the concept of the incentive mechanism, which is based
on a reward that lasts 20 years for each produced kWh. In particular, the first decree,20 which was issued in 2005, defined a
reward per kWh that was produced and consumed in loco. The
second decree,21 which was issued in 2007 and which applied
to all plants that started working by the end of 2010, extended
the reward to the overall produced energy and defined different
tariffs for different size of plants and kind of installation (on the
ground, partially integrated, or integrated on the roof). With the
third decree,22 which was issued in 2010 and which applied to all
plants that started working between January and May of 2011,
some more categories of plants and corresponding rewards were
defined: plants installed on buildings or other plants, integrated
plants with innovative characteristics, concentrated solar plants.
Both the fourth decree,2 which was issued in 2011 and which
applied to all plants that started working after May 2011, and the
fifth decree,24 which was issued in 2012, defined new rewarding
tariffs. The fifth decree applied to plants that started working by
the July 6, 2013, and in particular when the cumulative budget of
yearly incentives reached C6.7 billion. Although a deep analysis

of the decrees is out of the scope of the present work, we can

simplify the concept by saying that the incentive mechanism is
based on a reward that lasts 20 years for each produced kWh.
As an example, in the third plot of Figure 4, the evolution of the
incentives for a PV plant of nominal power comprised between
20 and 200 kW is illustrated. It is clear that there is a correspondence between the increase in the number of installed PV
plants and the incentives. In particular, it is concluded that in
2013, when the incentives have reached the minimum value also
the correspondent new installations of PV plants will be minimum. Finally, it is worth mentioning that the huge increase in PV
plants observed in 2011 is mainly due to the installation of PV
plants that, on average, show nominal power of about 50 kW (see
the last sub-plot of Figure 4). This means that the largest part of
plants was not installed by residential users that in general have a
power peak of about 3 kW. Since the government has decreased
the amount of the subsidy paid to the energy generated by PV
system in order to control the commercial use of the systems, the
residential systems have been greatly and negatively affected.
As for Austria, according to Mayr et al.,25 in 2001 the Austrian
photovoltaic market experienced a good boost due to the approval
of the green electricity bill again and feed-in tariff act. However,
these rules somehow collapsed again in 2004. As a result,
grid-connected plants with a total capacity of 175,493 kWp
and stand-alone systems with a total capacity of approximately
220 kWp were installed. Hence, in 2012 the total amount of
installed PV capacity in Austria increased to 175,712 kWp with a
production up to 337.5 GWh. The average system price of a gridconnected 1 kWp photovoltaic plant in Austria decreased from
3,579 C/kWp in 2010 to 2,698 C/kWp in 2012, i.e., a reduction of 24.6 %. In 2002, the feed-in tariff act was approved in
Austria. The type of approved feed in tariff (FIT) policy at that
time can be described as a constant, periodically updated, administratively defined tariff for a certain duration and system size,26
though it is claimed27 that the aim of a FIT policy is to enable the
customer to have a rapid and substantial growth in a PV investment. Anyway, in addition to the approved FIT policy investment,
co-funding (ICF) has been implemented to better support the PV
investment in Austria. Such a funding scheme provides investors

Downloaded by [92.36.190.82] at 00:52 02 September 2015

104
initial financial support for the construction and installation of
a PV system. There are three concerns about the Austrian subsidy policy. First, the approved policy does not consider the
future prices of PV technology. Second, the approved policy is
not competitive.27 Third, these subsidies are currently approved
via a Web-based first-come, first-served application procedure.
The eligibility, subsidization, or site of installation is not considered. Moreover, a FIT-subsidized PV system usually feeds all
generated electricity into the grid, because the FIT tariff is higher
than the end-user electricity price.28 PV system initial funds provide an incentive to owners to self-consume the highest amount
of produced energy and sell the excess amount to the electricity
retailer, as market prices for selling electricity are usually much
lower than for buying it. Finally, similar to Italythe ministry of
finance in Austria has recently voted to introduce a grid fee for
mid-size PV systems (>15 kWp) installed for self-consumption
(undercover commercial systems). A levy of 1.5 euro cent per
kWh29 will be charged to any PV system installed from March
1, 2014 that generates more than 5,000 kWh of solar power
per year. However, this act also greatly affects those who have
installed large residential systems (probably in remote house
clusters).

T. Khatib et al.
production auction has transparent and objective advantages for
potential private investors. In particular, this research work falls
in the scope of a specific research project called MONERGY.
At the stage, we aimed to collect energy consumption for selected
houses in Austria and Italy and measure the attitude of the household toward smart homes and energy management systems. Thus,
future research work must start with extracting appliance usage
models that can be analyzed for the purpose of appliance usage
prediction and management. On the other hand, wider study of
current structure and behaviors barriers that affect the attitude of
the household negatively must be conducted. These two issues
will lead to worthwhile technical information on smart homes
and energy management systems as well as nontechnical issues
regarding clean energy policy such feed-in tariff, incentive, and
current governmental initiatives.

Funding
This work was supported by the European Regional Development
Fund (ERDF), the Carinthian Economic Promotion Fund (KWF)
under grant KWF 20214|23743|35470, and the Italian Project
Interreg IV Italia-Austria MONERGY.

5. Conclusions
References
In this research, a quantitative assessment was done of the level
of consumption as well as the attitude of EU inhabitants who are
located in Carinthia and Friuli-VG toward the use of smart energy
management systems. The representative sample size was found
to be 385 respondents with a confidence of 95% and marginal
error of 5%. A questionnaire with 43 questions was used to
address two main issues, namely, the level of energy consumption and the attitude toward the use of smart energy management
systems. Based on the results, we were able to derive a model for
a typical 110 sqm area household in terms of energy consumption. In this model, the daily consumption is 16.8 kWh, with a
2.6 kW peak and a load factor of 27%. Furthermore, it was found
that an average of 46% of respondents expressed the willingness
to exploit tariff systems for operating their electrical appliances.
Moreover, about 67% of respondents declared that they care
about the energy efficiency at their households in order to reduce
the monthly bill. However, low renewable energy utilization was
observed due to some existing structural barriers. There are some
structural barriers for the adoption of smart energy management
systems and renewable energy sources in the zone of the study
for instance, the FIT amount decrease due to the increase in
PV system installation without any consideration to the desired
payback period, the outnumber of commercial PV system compared to residential PV systems, the constant FIT scheme policy,
applied taxes, the lack of consideration of the fluctuation in PV
technology prices and aging factor, and, finally, lack of consideration of the optimal design and placement of these systems. As a
final conclusion, a uniform, constant subsidy is inefficient, while
a simple discriminative first-price reverse auction comes with
several advantages. First, this type of an auction ensures market
prices and prevents inefficiencies due to inaccurate market price.
Second, the competition in PV system production caused by this
auction leads to lower levels of public subsidy. Third, having a PV

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