The overall objective of the S3C project is to foster ‘smart’ energy behaviour of households and SMEs in Europe via active user participation. Strongly linked to European large-scale demonstration projects, the small and flexible consortium follows a human centric approach from social and behavioural sciences. It includes insights from other fields such as telecommunications, and tests different technical and non-technical user interaction solutions in a family of projects. Recommendations for decision makers and developers of future research programmes will be produced as well as guidelines and a ‘best-practice’ toolkit to better involve customers in smart grid projects and roll-outs. In a first step, a theoretical framework will be developed. Innovative smart grid pilot projects, already implemented and on-going ones, as well as approaches in related fields will be analysed. The focus will be on end users while validating design, implementation, use and evaluation of interaction schemes. In a second step, best practices will be identified, which most efficiently impact the behaviour of users and can give guidance to the design of novel technical and social user-interaction schemes. A set of guidelines and a toolkit will be developed. Finally, the guidelines and tools will be validated through pilots within a ‘family of projects’ made available by project partners or identified in the course of the project. S3C researchers will assist ‘the family’ in applying them to their existing test cases. The test results improve the guidelines and toolkit and will be published on a website that will be accessible for at least 5 years after the project end and through other dissemination activities. A board of 25 experts gives advice and helps disseminate the results. The wide spread network of the consortium together with sound communication activities will guarantee visibility and exploitation of the project results. Thus the S3C family will help strengthen the EEGI.