This video explores how demand side interventions like dynamic pricing, energy tariffs and carbon alerts might be misguided in missing out on the relationship between the timing of energy use and the timing of daily activities. This is because energy is not used for its own sake, but in the accomplishment of everyday activities like eating, working, and television watching.

Making use of radial graphs that show when 10,000 people were carrying out activities in 2014 to 2015, the video examines the relationships between activities that are more or less fixed in time, and others that may – at first glance – appear to be more ‘flexible’.

Because of these kinds of relationships, it doesn’t make sense to think about the timing of different activities one by one.  Instead, when we put them together, we start to see something of the mass interconnections that make up a social rhythm. Interventions that encourage individuals to shift the timing of their energy consumption miss the point that the timing of demand is embedded in the timing of everyday life.