On 4 September 2019, India’s Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) launched a residential energy use dashboard called National Energy End-use Monitoring (NEEM). Shri Abhay Bakre, Director General, BEE, inaugurated the tool in the presence of other senior dignitaries, making it available for public use.

With ever-rising electricity consumption in India and the increasing number of appliances, data on residential energy end-use and appliance energy consumption at the household level are critical for developing better electricity demand projections and related strategies for curbing energy consumption.

Speaking at the event, Shri Abhay Bakre, Director General, Bureau of Energy Efficiency, said, “It gives us immense pleasure to launch the NEEM dashboard. It is a comprehensive platform to collect and analyze data on energy end-use and appliance energy consumption at the household level. Such data will help assess the existing policies and plan for future policymaking. The dashboard is a valuable tool for researchers, policymakers, power distribution companies, academia and others involved in designing energy policies and furthering research.”

The NEEM dashboard integrates data from a first of its kind survey of residential electricity consumption of 5,000 households, combined with real-time metering of appliance energy use of 200 households, representing various socio-economic classes and climatic zones in India. BEE conducted this analysis in partnership with CLASP and its partners Environmental Design Solutions, Market Xcel and Zenatix.

These data help establish more accurate end-use consumption and usage patterns, which inform energy policy development, impact assessment, and consumer-facing strategies for reducing energy consumption. The dashboard presents information on energy use, peak demand and other performance metrics across time that may be customized based on geography, climate and household type.

The online tool will help address the existing data gap and work toward a roadmap for future policy development and interventions. This dashboard displays live energy use of all the monitored households across India as well as findings from detailed household-level survey on appliance use.

“BEE, CLASP and our partners are working to bridge the gap on availability of end-user data on energy. By integrating both survey-based and real-time data, our objective was to obtain a realistic end-use baseline for robust energy efficiency policies and assess the potential impact of these policies. This initiative needs to be continued to enhance the existing database and monitor the trends,” said Dr Archana Walia, Director, CLASP India.