UCL-Energy presents research on residential energy use in Oman

Members of UCL-Energy are today (January 22 2014) presenting the results of a scoping study of residential energy use in Oman, at the World Future Energy Summit (WFES) in Abu Dhabi.

Along with partners the Authority for Electricity Regulation, Oman, and PassivSystems, UCL-Energy have piloted a data gathering exercise using multiple and innovative methods, including: a survey to gather data on building characteristics such as age, size, fabric, number of rooms, etc; a survey on occupancy (number, age profiles, employment status, attitudes to electricity use and energy costs etc), monitoring of in home energy use, all of which was correlated with ambient weather data. This integrated approach produces insights that go beyond any single method in isolation and has delivered some important findings as well as highlighting areas for future research.

UCL-Energy also developed an initial housing stock model as a framework to integrate data and test the effectiveness of a number of simple energy saving interventions in order to demonstrate the value of an evidence based approach to policy evaluation.

Tadj Oreszczyn, Director of UCL-Energy said: “Understanding the drivers of energy use at a household level is vital for the creation of robust models of domestic energy use. Where models are used as a policy development tool it becomes even more important that they accurately describe the situation on the ground. This scoping study has shown the value of a mixed methods approach to data gathering. Approaching a problem from a number of standpoints in this manner delivers a much richer understanding of the key factors.”