EXPLORING END USER PERSPECTIVES IN THE PRACTICE OF STAYING WARM AT HOME

End user perspectives in studies of household resource consumption are important to take into account in relation to urban district heating systems. Even though district heating systems are often not controlled by the end users, their understanding of the heating system is also relevant for the acceptance and efficiency of the system. A study into residents comfort conventions and their relation to the heating system, provide policy makers and utility providers with knowledge that offers insights into the social and cultural embeddedness of heating homes. This is needed to understand how provisioning of energy and resource consumption processes are tied together. The CELSIUS project is an EU funded demonstrator project that aims to facilitate the distribution, deployment and operation of smart district heating and cooling solutions across Europe, while at the same time supporting cities in the development of trustworthy, affordable and low carbon heat supply for citizens and businesses. End users of heating systems in London have been studied in in this paper. Different end user barriers for implementing new district heating systems will be discussed in the paper, which are related to issues of ownership, control and trust. Also, we present a dialogue method to illustrate how residents struggle to create an understanding of the heating system in relation to their house, and how it affects their relationship with the heating system itself. Ultimately, our study shows that due to these different understandings and misunderstandings on comfort conventions, and the relation between ownership types and the heating system as well as the larger infrastructure, it can be helpful to create a dialogue between the different actors in the provisioning of heat to homes.