What is the concept?
Energy Rehab is about creating an awareness of energy consumption in the home.
How does it work?
The Energy Rehab kit consists of a card with a pre-paid amount of energy (like a phone card) and some stickers to be placed on the devices in the home. The sticker is paired with the socket of the device. You transfer the amount of energy you need from the energy card to the sticker on the device by sliding your finger on the card to the sticker. It is possible to reverse it and move the energy back to the card by sliding the finger backwards. When the energy has been used e.g. on the TV, it shuts off automatically. Now it is necessary to borrow energy from other devices, a friend, buy a new card or live without TV for the rest of the month.
Why is it valuable for the people who use it?
We do not have a sense of our habits in the home. We turn on the TV to have some background noise and we leave some extra lights on. When we get the bill from the energy company, we don’t understand how we came to the amount on the bill – we accept it and pay. What does a kWh actually mean? This was the question we worked from. Getting to know your devices and being forced to prioritise your use of these creates an awareness of ones behaviour and an understanding of the consequences.
What were your key learnings?
From our experience prototyping, we found, that the knowledge of rations and the visibility of ones behaviour contribute to a new way of viewing ones habits and routines in the home.
