The design of a location-based mobile service with augmented reality to capture perceptions of coloured photovoltaic scenarios in rural and urban environments

Current fossil fuel production sites are traditionally placed out of sight but as the move to renewable energy systems progresses, our social, spatial and temporal processes related to energy production evolve.Decentralised energy production is leading to new visible land and cityscapes.It is currently estimated that fossil fuel production infrastructure takes up 0.3% of land surface in small to medium-sized countries.For countries such as Luxembourg this is expected to increase to around 6% as renewable energy production from wind and solar become more dominant.This shift in energy production landscapes is leading to more visible energy production infrastructure which will in turn impact our relationship and attachments to places.Thus, as part of the SolarZukunft project, we hypothesise that photovoltaic installations that fit with the look and feel of the local land or cityscapes will improve social acceptance and reduce the impact of our place attachments.To realise such a hypothesis we are faced with several significant challenges: (1) how to develop coloured patterned PV panels that are camouflaged within their surroundings but yet maintain their energy yield (2) how to demonstrate to all community stakeholders what their potential new energy environment could look like in the future and to evaluate their perceptions of this transition.