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Dr Graeme Stuart

Job: Research Fellow

Faculty: Computing, Engineering and Media

School/department: School of Engineering and Sustainable Development

Research group(s): Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development

Address: De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH, United Kingdom

T: +44 (0)116 257 7964

E: gstuart@dmu.ac.uk

W: http://dmu.academia.edu/GraemeStuart

Social Media: www.linkedin.com/pub/graeme-stuart/14/39/793

 

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Personal profile

Graeme has a BSc (Hons) in Applied Environmental Science from the University of Portsmouth as well as an MSc and a PhD in Energy and Sustainable Development from De Montfort University. Prior to undertaking his PhD, Graeme worked for Nottinghamshire County Council as an Energy Officer, where he was responsible for the Council’s environmental reporting and helped administer energy saving projects across the county.

Graeme’s PhD research was funded by an EPSRC industrial CASE studentship with Nottinghamshire County Council, Leicester City Council and Pilkington’s Energy Efficiency Trust (PEET) as part of the INREB (Integration of New and Renewable Energy in Buildings) Faraday Partnership.

Graeme’s research focuses on the empirical modelling of building energy performance. Complex models based on detailed analysis of high resolution time series energy consumption data provide benchmarks customised for individual buildings and allow even small changes in energy performance to be identified and analysed. Graeme uses these models to provide information to energy managers and to provide feedback to building users.

Research group affiliations

Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development

Publications and outputs

  • Agent-Based Modelling of Electricity Access in Informal Settlements in South Africa
    dc.title: Agent-Based Modelling of Electricity Access in Informal Settlements in South Africa dc.contributor.author: Kerr, Daniel William; Stuart, Graeme; Snape, J. Richard dc.description.abstract: In the latter half of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st century, urbanisation in developing countries has increased dramatically. Across the developing world, urban populations have been rising rapidly, and the capacity of national and municipal governments to service these growing populations has not been able to keep pace with rising demand. This has led to a rise in informal access to services and the development of informal settlements. Defining informal habitation is complex, but some common features are a lack of access to the formal services of the city, be that water, sanitation, electricity, or housing services. Across the developing world, growth in informal settlements has accompanied urban population growth: 1.03 billion people in 2018 lived in informal settlements, according to the United Nations, 233 million of whom live in Sub-Saharan Africa. For the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG11), to be achieved by 2030, access to urban services needs to be accelerated. South African electricity services in urban informal settlements have seen significant development over the past decade, with programs such as the Upgrading Informal Settlements Program (UISP) ‘giving priority to the provision of basic services and functional tenure’. However, access to services is still a challenge in many informal settlement communities, and illegal access to basic services, particularly electricity, remains high. This research uses a novel agent-based modelling methodology to determine which factors affect most strongly the incidences of illegal access to electricity, as well as the main drivers and barriers to greater formal access to electricity in informal settlements in South Africa. Access to capital, political economy barriers, and technical challenges contribute to high incidences of illegal access, and addressing these barriers will lead to higher formal access rates and more reliable electricity services for residents. dc.description: Based on a conference paper presented at Sustainable Development and Planning 2022 open access article
  • Supporting Decentralised Energy Management through Smart Monitoring Systems in Public Authorities
    dc.title: Supporting Decentralised Energy Management through Smart Monitoring Systems in Public Authorities dc.contributor.author: Stuart, Graeme; Ozawa-Meida, L. dc.description.abstract: Energy infrastructure in large, multi-site organisations such as municipal authorities, is often heterogeneous in terms of factors such as age and complexity of the technology deployed. Responsibility for day-to-day operation and maintenance of this infrastructure is typically dispersed across large numbers of individuals and impacts on even larger numbers of building users. Yet, the diverse population of stakeholders with an interest in the operation and development of this dynamic infrastructure typically have little or no visibility of energy and water usage. This paper explores the integration of utility metering data into urban management processes via the deployment of an accessible “smart meter” monitoring system. The system is deployed in three public authorities and the impact of the system is investigated based on the triangulation of evidence from semi-structured interviews and case studies. The research is framed from three perspectives: the bottom-up micro-level (individual and local), the top-down macro-level (organisation-wide and strategic) and intermediate meso-level (community-focused and operation). Evidence shows that improved communication across these levels enables a decentralisation and joining-up of energy management. Evidence points to the importance of reducing the cognitive load associated with monitoring systems. Better access to information supports more local autonomy, easier communication and cooperation between stakeholders and fosters the conditions necessary for adaptive practices to emerge. dc.description: open access article
  • Introducing JavaScript Game Development: Build a 2D Game from the Ground Up
    dc.title: Introducing JavaScript Game Development: Build a 2D Game from the Ground Up dc.contributor.author: Stuart, Graeme dc.description.abstract: Learn to build a fully-functional 2D game inspired by the 1979 Atari classic, Asteroids, using just HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. Developing games has never been easier than it is now. New web technology allows even beginner developers to turn their hand to game development. Developed from an undergraduate course module, Introducing JavaScript Game Development teaches each new technology as it is introduced so can be followed by enthusiastic beginners as well as intermediate coders. You will learn how to work with HTML5 and the canvas element, how to understand paths, how to draw to a design and create your spaceship and asteroids. You'll then move on to animating your game, and finally building. You will work step-by-step through the game design process, starting with only what is necessary to complete each step, and refactoring the code as necessary along the way, reflecting the natural progression that code follows in the real world. Each chapter is designed to take your code base to the next level and to add to your skills. After completing the examples in this book you will have the tools necessary to build your own, high-quality games. Make the process of creating object-oriented 2D games more fun and more productive and get started on your game development journey.
  • Competing priorities: Lessons in engaging students to achieve energy savings in universities.
    dc.title: Competing priorities: Lessons in engaging students to achieve energy savings in universities. dc.contributor.author: Bull, R.; Stuart, Graeme; Everitt, Dave; Jennings, N; Romanowicz, J.; Laskari, M dc.description.abstract: This paper presents findings from an EU funded international student-led energy saving competition (SAVES) on a scale previously unseen. There are multiple accounts of short-term projects and energy saving competitions encouraging pro-environmental behaviour change amongst students in university dormitories but the purpose of this research is to provide evidence of consistent and sustained energy savings from student-led energy savings competitions, underpinned by practical action. A mixed methods approach (pre- and post- intervention surveys, focus groups and analysis of energy meter data) was taken to determine the level of energy savings and quantifiable behaviour change delivered by students across participating university dormitories. This research has provided further insight into the potential for savings and behaviour change in university dormitories through relatively simple actions. Whilst other interventions have shown greater savings, this project provided consistent savings over two years 7% across a large number of university dormitories in five countries through simple behaviour changes. An energy dashboard displaying near a real-time leaderboard was added to the engagement in the second year of the project. Whilst students were optimistic about the role that energy dashboards could play, the evidence is not here to quantify the impact of dashboards. Further research is required to understand the potential of dashboards to contribute to behavioural change savings and in constructing competitions between people and dormitories that are known to each other. SAVES provided engagement with students, enabling, empowering and motivating them to save energy – focusing specifically on the last stage of the ‘Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action’ framework. Automated meter reading data was used in the majority of participating dormitories to run near real-time energy challenges through an energy dashboard that informed students how much energy they saved compared to a target, and encouraged peer-to-peer learning and international cooperation through a virtual twinning scheme. Findings from energy saving competitions in universities are typically from small-scale and short-term interventions. SAVES was an energy-saving competition in university dormitories facilitated by the UK National Union of Students in five countries reaching over 50,000 students over two academic years (incorporating dormitories at 17 universities). As such it provides clear and important evidence of the real-world long-term potential efficiency savings of such interventions. dc.description: open access article
  • Institutional, social and individual behavioural effects of energy feedback in public buildings across eleven European cities
    dc.title: Institutional, social and individual behavioural effects of energy feedback in public buildings across eleven European cities dc.contributor.author: Ozawa-Meida, L.; Wilson, Caroline; Fleming, P. D.; Stuart, Graeme; Holland, Carl dc.description.abstract: Better understanding of the factors influencing how people use energy in public buildings can help deliver more effective CO2 reduction strategies. This paper describes the institutional, social and individual behavioural effects of communication campaigns in over 500 public buildings in 11 European cities. These campaigns involved engaging with staff to reduce energy use through feedback services based on information from sub hourly meter readings. A summative evaluation was conducted to understand impacts of different information provision in these cities. Qualitative data were gathered through a set of interviews with 40 building professionals at the central or building level. These interviews identified differences in how the energy efficiency communication-based campaigns were implemented at each site and elicited factors to explain how users’ perceptions and understanding changed as a result of the interventions. The evaluation framework helped to identify not only improvements in the delivery of communication-based campaigns, but also the communication factors that impacted on individual behaviour change. The research highlighted the influence of institutional and social effects on individual beliefs and norms. To achieve more effective change in attitudes to reduce use, energy feedback needs to be supported with engagement activities, such as energy coaches, campaigns, and interactive online fora. dc.description: The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.
  • Smart energy management for non-domestic buildings: Case studies of two local authorities in the UK
    dc.title: Smart energy management for non-domestic buildings: Case studies of two local authorities in the UK dc.contributor.author: Azzenoud, Marouane; Stuart, Graeme; Bull, R.; Lemon, Mark; Perry, D. dc.description.abstract: The use of smart meters has increased since the beginning of the 21st century. The UK government, for example, has recently initiated a programme of rolling out 53 million smart electricity and gas meters for homes and small businesses by 2020 with the expectation that €20 billion will be saved on energy bills over the coming 15 years. The UK’s mass deployment of smart meters has resulted in Local Authorities experiencing additional costs from their installation in their non-domestic buildings, including the costs of new data collection and reporting systems. As a consequence, energy managers are increasingly being forced to consider the ideal frequency for collecting and reporting energy data, appropriate methods for processing that data and the need to rely on ‘real-time’ energy data when there are several other ways in which energy data can be accessed (bills, direct readings, etc.). Finally, what are the realistic expectations about the financial savings attributable to the installation of smart meters? This paper seeks to address these questions through two case studies which examine the effects of the smart meter roll-out programme on two separate UK Local Authorities, Northamptonshire County Council and Leicester City Council.
  • Closing the feedback loop: A systems approach to supporting community-wide behaviour change in non-domestic buildings
    dc.title: Closing the feedback loop: A systems approach to supporting community-wide behaviour change in non-domestic buildings dc.contributor.author: Stuart, Graeme; Snape, J. Richard; Fleming, P. D. dc.description.abstract: Energy consumption is notoriously invisible to building users. Communicating energy performance to users presents a significant opportunity to support behaviour change. Access to near real-time consumption data makes ubiquitous energy performance feedback systems a realistic possibility. Non-domestic building energy performance is a complicated issue, so providing simple, intelligible feedback can be difficult. Communicating what building users are supposed to do with the information is still more so. A true closed-loop feedback system must include both communication of information to users and a means for users to affect the building to which the information pertains. This paper reports the design and use of a novel information system to facilitate a true feedback loop between a community of building stakeholders (users, energy professionals, researchers) and 25 pilot buildings. The buildings were equipped to communicate energy performance in near real time via a user-friendly ‘dashboard’ built on a sophisticated system of automated data capture, energy consumption modelling, predictive statistical analysis and visualisation. The ‘dashboard’ allowed casual users to access information easily via a simple happy/sad performance indicator whilst more “data-philic” users were able to click through to a data rich, easy-to-use interface. Users were also provided with access to a digital social platform enabling transparent discussion of energy performance with reference to the objective data. Results show that the ‘dashboard’ and digital social platform components are each valuable in their own right but in combination they produced a system whereby users could identify and solve energy and water performance problems effectively and efficiently. dc.description: The work was partly funded by the SMARTSPACES project (http://smartspaces.eu) co-funded by the European Commission within the CIP ICT Policy Support Programme (Grant agreement no. 297273).
  • Summative behaviour change evaluation of up-to-date metered energy feedback in European public buildings
    dc.title: Summative behaviour change evaluation of up-to-date metered energy feedback in European public buildings dc.contributor.author: Ozawa-Meida, L.; Wilson, Caroline; Holland, Carl; Fleming, P. D.; Stuart, Graeme dc.description.abstract: Energy consumption practices and behaviour are increasingly an important focus of attention, for energy efficiency measures. Such is the demand caused by behaviour at the level of the individual, it may cancel out the benefits of engineering solutions, such as more energy efficient appliances (Adua, 2010). This paper focuses on an evaluation of the SMARTSPACES project and its effect on energy-related behaviour change. The project provided two services: an energy management service (EMS) and an energy decision support service (EDSS). These services were implemented in over 450 public buildings across 11 European cities in 8 European countries (Serbia, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain, Turkey and United Kingdom). Building professionals (energy managers) primarily used the EMS and building staff used the EDSS. These services intended to inform, support and enable target audiences to use up-to-date metered feedback to reduce energy use in public buildings. The theory of change that underpins the evaluation framework is based in the Elaboration Likelihood Model which aims to understand how communication can influence attitudes and the Theory of Planned Behaviour that examines which attitudes are more likely to predict intentions and behaviours (Wilson, 2014). The paper presents results of ex-ante and ex-post surveys to building staff about their levels of awareness, attitudes, perceived control behaviour and intentions in three selected cities: Bristol, Leicester and Venlo. Outcomes varied across the examined cities depending upon the type of information presented, the level of engagement of users with the energy saving campaigns and the amount of previous energy management work undertaken by buildings’ facilities and energy management professionals.
  • Policy, ‘politicking’ and organisational culture – Barriers to engaging employees in behaviour change initiatives.
    dc.title: Policy, ‘politicking’ and organisational culture – Barriers to engaging employees in behaviour change initiatives. dc.contributor.author: Bull, R.; Everitt, Dave; Stuart, Graeme dc.description.abstract: The energy savings potential within non-domestic buildings/commercial buildings from behaviour change initiatives is becoming well known. Low-cost interventions centred on simple energy efficiency behaviour changes have been shown to contribute to local, national and EU policy commitments to carbon reduction upwards of 10-20%. Yet, research also shows time and again that these straightforward behaviour changes can be anything but simple. Notwithstanding the psychological and social complexities inherent in behaviour, human behaviour in non-domestic buildings is affected by organisational culture, departmental ‘politiking’ and conflicting internal politics and business goals. No-where is this more evident that in local government where municipalities are expected to lead on carbon reduction initiatives whilst operating in changing political landscapes and juggling decreasing operational budgets with increasing expectations on public services. This paper presents findings from a UK Research Council funded ‘research in the wild’ case study exploring the role of digitally enabled engagement in a UK local authority. Innovative methods of combining the digital economy and user-engagement were trialled in an effort to increase user-interaction within their buildings and foster a more collaborative approach to energy management. A qualitative research approach was undertaken and findings are discussed from an analysis of a focus group and a set of semi-structured interviews with members of the user group and key actors within the municipality. Findings show that whilst there are positive signs with regards to the potential of increased user-engagement and ICT digital tools to facilitate behaviour change, barriers remain with regards to the implementation in ‘real world’ contexts of innovative approaches. For this particular organisation these included a staff reduction programme amidst financial cuts, a risk-averse culture to new technologies, and fundamental questions around where responsibilities lie with regards to energy management. Future innovations must take account of these wider issues in order to be ‘fit for purpose’ and achieve the energy reductions required.
  • Moving beyond feedback: Energy behaviour and local engagement in the United Kingdom
    dc.title: Moving beyond feedback: Energy behaviour and local engagement in the United Kingdom dc.contributor.author: Bull, R.; Lemon, Mark; Everitt, Dave; Stuart, Graeme dc.description.abstract: The energy savings potential within non-domestic buildings from behaviour change initiatives is well known. Energy efficiency measures can contribute to local, national and EU policy commitments on carbon reduction. Yet, research also shows behaviour change is anything but simple. No-where is this more evident that in local government where municipalities are expected to lead on carbon reduction initiatives whilst operating in challenging political landscapes. This paper reflects on a UK Research Council funded case study exploring the role of engagement in a UK municipality. Innovative feedback tools and user-engagement were developed in an effort to foster a collaborative approach to energy management. Findings from an analysis of a focus group and a set of semi-structured interviews show encouraging signs with regards to increased user-engagement and digital tools, but barriers remain with regards to the ‘real world’ implementation of innovative, and technologically grounded, approaches. These included a staff reduction programme amidst financial cuts, a risk-averse culture with regard to new technologies, and debate about where responsibilities lie with regards to energy management. While these findings were case specific they have implications for organisations contemplating how technology might support them in workplace engagement for reduced energy use. dc.description: This article is available via Open Access

Click here to view a full listing of Graeme Stuart's publications and outputs.

Research interests/expertise

  • Energy management
  • Numerical energy management
  • Automated data analysis
  • Energy consumption modelling
  • Event detection
  • Data visualisation
  • Energy performance
  • Energy feedback
  • Machine learning

Consultancy work

British Gas project assessing domestic energy end-use disaggregation systems.

Available - Yes.