Residential heat comfort practices: understanding users

The user-centred approach to heat consumption in housing is a highly relevant, but often neglected, aspect of residential energy consumption. The practice-theory approach is presented as a development within the socio-technical approach. A detailed analysis of empirical evidence from different households living in similar buildings in a suburb of Copenhagen, Denmark, shows significant variation in energy consumption due to different usage patterns of both the house and its heating system. An analysis using practice-theory finds that technologies, embodied habits, knowledge, and meanings are the main components in the understanding of both what holds this practice together as a collectively shared practice and the different socio-material configurations of each of the individual households.