The idea is that representatives from three local Transition Initiatives monitor their electricity use over an agreed time, using real time monitors with the data recorded either automatically or manually and participants reporting back at meetings to discuss ways of reducing their energy use.

Local environmentalist Prashant Vaze gave a talk on his previous experience of a local monitoring scheme, and energy and IT consultant Paul Tanner talked about his experiences of the metering challenge and looked at ways of automating and presenting the data.

The Energy Challenge arose out of three local Transition Initiatives – Transition Kentish Town, Transition Tufnell Park and Transition Dartmouth Park – doing their own talks and films, but wanting to co-operate on something practical.

Within the three groups there is experience of a previous energy monitoring project – the HiCan Home Energy Metering Project – which successfully monitored energy use over ten weeks in teams of six with 22 households, and resulted in an overall energy saving of 11% from baseline and in some cases as high as 57%. The winning contestants had 29% overall savings. All the teams except one managed to reduce their electricity use. This has obvious monetary and environmental benefits.

Prashant explained that each contestant had to attach a small sensor and wireless transmitter around the wire near the electricity meter which sends information to the display unit which tells them their power use either in kW or pence per hour. The display units had batteries and could be carried around from room to room.

The second type of meter was a plug in meter. This was inserted into the electric socket in-between the appliance and the mains electricity. It is used to measure the power use of single devices.

Each of the contestants was asked to complete a spreadsheet about their home and household and to fill in information from their standard electricity supplier meter every fortnight picking the same time and day. The first two readings – a fortnight apart – were intended to establish a baseline use for their household. The real time display meters and plug in meters were provided after week two and they were then asked to try and reduce their consumption in competition with each other. Readings were taken every two weeks for a six week period.

Several people wished to retain the meters after the competition was over, and others wanted to buy one themselves.

Prashant said that the competition aspect was of interest to some people and it had the effect of galvanising effort. Four events were held over ten weeks.

Some of the issues arising from the HiCan project will hopefully be addressed in the new project, which will include a lot more automation. This will hopefully reduce the time spent filling in spreadsheets, along with some of the physical problems about reading the display, due to location, and programming in tariff data.

Increasing automation (recording of data to a site, which can be anonymised, but also available to the individual participant through a password or app) will allow more time for feedback, group work and to institute behavioural changes.

The potential to automate and collect data is significant, along with the pooling of the data into groups, and the ability of both groups and individuals to access the data in a readily understandable format.

Paul Tanner said in his talk that average household energy prices rose from £600 in 2004 to £1,200 this year. He said if you can’t measure, you can’t manage and the advantage of automating the data is that it gets around the inconvenience of recording manually.

He showed via a series of graphs from automatic monitoring systems of temperature, energy use and costs, how money is wasted unnecessarily on heating. And he said 80% of domestic energy use goes on space and water heating.

And he went through some useful gadgets including the Network OWL which connects via Wifi, with no monitor required, and other web and phone apps. He also outlined Social Meter software, which is intended for this project.

Ten households from the three Transition Towns have already signed up to the Challenge which is due to start in January. One interesting feature is that they are from a diverse set of households and housing stock, ranging from three bedroom Mansion blocks to two bedroom seventies built flats, and 4-storey Victorian and other housing types. They also range from single occupancy, couples and families.

The Energy Groups have already agreed a bulk discount with OWL.

The talks were on the evening of Halloween and the government’s announcement on Feed-in-Tariffs (FiTs) consultation, which had halved the rate for solar photovoltaics (pv) equal to or under 4Kw from 43.3p to 21p for retrofits. One wag called it FiT or Treat.

The mood was one of disappointment over the announcement, and scepticism on the Green Deal. However out of such things resourcefulness is born and ideas included securing community money for energy projects via the Bags for Life scheme to simple home made solar thermal systems and no-cost but very effective measures like turning the thermostat down by one degree.

Alan Morton of en10ergy kicked off proceedings outlining the progress of the Muswell Hill Sustainability Group which gained a grant from Haringey Council and is working on 840 houses in a low carbon zone.

One of the successes has been the formation of the low carbon buying group which is a bulk-purchasing scheme which will bring lower prices (10-20%) on the more expensive energy-saving measures and on renewables – solar electric (PV), solar thermal, new boilers and replacement windows.

The low carbon zone activities include negotiating bulk deals with suppliers of energy saving measures e.g loft insulation, condensing boilers, solar thermal heating. It also aims to make householders aware of local grant schemes to allow them to implement measures as cheaply as possible and raising awareness in the wider community.

Alan showed a slide from the Department of Energy and Climate Change which illustrated the cost of abating carbon. Turning down the thermostat by one degree proved a very effective carbon cutting measure. Installing solar pv came in as a high cost per pound of carbon saved.

In the light of the cost cuts, one initiative Alan is working on is community use of the Bags for Life scheme, where people get Nectar points when they re-use bags. He said than an extra 500 million plastic bags are used in the UK each year, which amounts to a potential £5m.

Winston Moore, consultant with the Association of Building Engineers gave a quick Mind Map outline / presentation about the contents of the PlanLoCal resource pack to Plan for Low Carbon Living (www.planlocal.org). It aims to help visualize possible projects and ways forward in implementing renewable energy projects in North London. A case study video about the installation of solar pv at an Oxford school illustrated the principles.

Schools consume a lot of energy with bills of £25,000-30,000 and need as much help as they can get under the current cost cutting climate, said Alan Morton in the discussion.

In conclusion, like many things in terms of community planning, early consultation is vital, along with involving all stakeholders in decisions.

In the light of the economic situation and lack of grants, part of the discussion focused on the Green Deal. Several people in the audience expressed scepticism at to the Deal’s potential value. Next year, assessors will be able analyse properties and suggest a range of energy saving and low carbon measures which can be paid for over the long term via cost savings accrued on energy bills. Questions related to the independence of assessors, and the expected rise in energy prices to the potential cost of the measures.

One way out is DIY energy saving measures, and Paul Allen of Transition Belsize gave a mini-presentation of how he cut his flat’s energy use considerably via switching appliances, installing energy monitors and putting in LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) instead of halogen lighting.

He said that over the last six months, new LEDs coming onto the market have improved in quality considerably in terms of performance and colour temperature, and given the increase in sales, costs are coming down.

An LED seed Bank has been created by a coalition of local Transition Towns, which enables people to buy LEDs at a reduced rate.

The next meeting is on 28 November at the Grand Union, Highgate Road, NW5 when Richard Griffiths of Parity Projects and Dan White senior energy and sustainability officer at Camden Council are set to speak.