Reduce Your Juice trial a success for energy savings

Brisbane’s new energy-saving program, ‘Reduce Your Juice’, has successfully concluded initial trials, with participants in the trials reporting power bill savings of more than 18%.

Launched in May this year, Reduce Your Juice uses an interactive mobile gaming app in conjunction with a social media community, email and SMS to guide energy-saving behaviour. The app delivers three mini games that target three key areas in which householders can save power: lights and appliances; heating and cooling; and washing and drying.

The trial involved over 1000 young adult renters on low incomes, who can, on average, spend about 10% of their weekly income on power bills. One participant reported her bill had dropped by more than $400 since she began taking part in the energy-saving community and playing the mini games. Furthermore, while the trial required participants to play the games for five minutes a week over six weeks, results show most ended up playing six times more than what was asked of them.

The creator of the program, CitySmart, received the award for Best Residential Energy Efficiency Project at the National Energy Efficiency Awards last month. According to Energy Efficiency Council CEO Luke Menzel, the award judges were “extremely impressed by the behavioural change achieved in some of Queensland’s most marginalised communities”.

An initial set of trial results is expected to be released later this month, while the full report is due in February 2016. CitySmart CEO Neil Horrocks said he is “very encouraged by the preliminary findings”, which indicate that CitySmart has effectively used behavioural research to “create an unconventional and inventive approach to tackle a costly issue for householders in today’s digital generation”.