Dreams or nightmares? Consumers’ reactions to home energy automation

Smart meters are paving the way for a smarter future where automated appliances and intelligent energy systems present ample opportunities for effortless energy efficiency.In this view of the future, smart self-learning systems will optimize a home’s heating, switch off forgotten devices, and schedule high demand consumption for low demand periods. However, to ensure that such a smart vision canbecome a smart reality, it is vital to understand potential future customers’ reaction to ‘smart automation’ scenarios as a guide to their design, implementation and marketing. Accordingly, in the following paper I will present survey and focus group datathat investigates the issues surrounding automation and identifies consumers’ dreams and nightmares with respect to the “smarter” future.The data suggests that underlying these dreams and nightmares are factors related to the pursuit of subjective well-being through the satiation of some core fundamental human needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.