Visualising Household Power
Consumption
Mayo Nissen (German, born 1986)
Copenhagen Institute of Interaction
Design (Denmark, est. 2007)
2009
Processing software
Mayo Nissen’s poster visualizes a
home’s power usage over 24
hours and compares it to an average
of data collected over four days.
The point is not simply to understand
energy-usage patterns but also to give
narrative shape to our everyday activities.
The power data on the graph, which
was recorded at one-minute intervals,
reconstructs the activities of a given
day in its spikes and lulls; the designer
muses, “Was that spike at 3am a one-off
nighttime cup of tea…and can boiling the
kettle just once really use so much
power? That consistent peak must be
dinnertime. Is that wave in the graph,
visible at night, the fridge on its cycle,
running all day every day?” The chart’s
light gray lines show each minute of each
day; the thick black line represents the
average energy used over four days; and
the red line is what is known in statistics
as a “smoothed average,” revealing
broader usage patterns.
Category: Life
Tags: Interactions / Visualizations
