SocialWatt article in Energy Sources, Part B
An article "A multi-sourced data based framework for assisting utilities identify energy poor households: a case-study in Greece" has been published in "Energy Sources, Part B: Economics, Planning, and Policy", by the ICCS team, as part of the special issue "Energy Poverty Alleviation: Effective Policies, Best Practices and Innovative Schemes". This work is based on research conducted within the SocialWatt project.
More specifically, this study introduces a framework that assists utilities effectively identify energy poor households among their clients. The framework is established upon an enhanced version of the well-known 10% measurement index, being adjusted by a set of weather-driven, income-oriented, and energy-oriented variables so that more accurate, indicative, and objective results are automatically derived through multi-sourced data.
The proposed framework differs from the common, income-based ones, as well as other approaches that integrate information about the particularities of the households and their occupants, in a sense that it deconstructs energy poverty into its two core components, namely energy and income, and examines them jointly.
The proposed framework is demonstrated in the region of Attica, Greece, exploiting a large dataset of households that use natural gas as a primary heating energy source. The results highlight the strengths of the proposed method, indicating also some of its limitations.