Smart meters and in-home displays (IHD) have been recently adopted to help give residential consumers more control over energy consumption, and to help meet environmental and security of supply objectives. The paper aims to identify the effectiveness of smart meters and real-time IHDs in reducing Shanghai household energy consumption. A first pilot in Shanghai city with an effective sample of 131 respondents was arranged to two groups as IHD households and non-IHD households. A statistical analysis model was developed to investigate the characteristics and the regulations of electricity consumption in these two groups, such as check frequency, electricity consumption reduction and shifting, energy bill saving, and standby power. The research results demonstrate IHD could lead to around 9.1% (11.0%) in reduction of monthly electricity consumption (bill). A general comparison of the electricity consumption reduction between this research and the average UK case was further made. The overall research is expected to contribute some empirical evidence on how IHD feedback could influence household electricity consumption in the Chinese context. It will further provide a social-technical basis for the electricity-economic leverage of government and the bidding competitiveness of power-related industries.