Ambient Awareness: Experiencing Always-On Displays in the Life of PV Households
Arjun Rajendran Menon, Jorge Luis Zapico · 2025
The adoption of photovoltaic (PV) panels, electric vehicles (EVs), and dynamic electricity pricing is transforming households into active "prosumers"who generate, consume, and sell electricity. This shift, driven by rising costs and environmental concerns, requires new technologies to help households manage their production and consumption. Electricity's invisibility adds complexity, necessitating interfaces that make energy use and generation comprehensible. This paper presents the Always-On In-Home Display (AOIHD), a technology probe designed for prosumer households to navigate the dynamics of this production and consumption - balancing periods of solar abundance and grid reliance, by making energy data persistently and collectively accessible within the household. Adopting a practice theory lens, we explore how the AOIHD was experienced in daily life over a four-year autobiographical study and through deployments in other Swedish households. Our findings highlight four experiential qualities - Learning, Triggering, Including, and Troubling - that illustrate how the display supports the domestication of energy feedback technologies in prosumer contexts. We argue that fostering integration into household practices is key to sustaining meaningful interaction with smart energy technologies.