Posts Tagged ‘real-time energy monitoring’
Last week we started the Perth Solar City Bring It Down Challenge, where seven schools are being challenged to bring down their energy use over seven weeks.
Round one of the competition is over and we’re incredibly pleased that every school has managed to reduce their energy use. Mundaring Christian College and Hillside Christian College are neck and neck at the moment, with Mundaring just pipping Hillside in Round 1 with an awesome 50% reduction in their energy use.
Ballajura Community College is the largest school in the competition, with a huge student population and a baseline energy use of over 24,000kWh per week, which is equivalent to about 220 average homes. While they only scored 10 points this round, I think the 6% reduction, equivalent to over 1,500kWh, is fantastic. To put 1,500kWh in perspective, its equivalent to the energy that Ballajura might get if they installed a 55kW PV array.
If you’d like to check out the complete results from round one, you can download the Western Power Bring It Down Challenge Round 1 Results (PDF).
Every school dashboard can be viewed from the Bring It Down page on the Perth Solar City web site, or you can click on the schools below to see how they are going:
Upper Swan Primary School
Ballajura Community College
Woodbridge Primary School
Mundaring Christian College
Hillside Christian College
Swan View Senior High School
Weld Square Primary School
Greensense is working with Western Power and the Perth Solar City project to run the Bring It Down challenge.
Seven Perth schools have been challenged to reduce their energy use over seven weeks. The school that makes the biggest saving will win a $10,000 eco-makeover for their school from Perth Solar City. We have provided each school with a real-time energy monitoring system to help them find energy savings and to run the competition.
We have loaded historical data on each schools energy use into Greensense View to calculate a baseline. Each week we award points to the schools based on their energy reduction against their baseline. This way smaller schools like Weld Square Primary School can compete with bigger schools like Ballajura Community College.
The competition will extend over the up coming school holidays, so there is a big incentive for schools to understand and manage their energy use when the school is unoccupied. One of the top tips we gave schools was to develop ‘switch off’ plans for their class rooms and common areas. These apply from lunch breaks, to after school, and from weekends to school holidays.
Every school dashboard can be viewed from the Bring It Down page on the Perth Solar City web site, or you can click on the schools below to see how they are going:
Upper Swan Primary School
Ballajura Community College
Woodbridge Primary School
Mundaring Christian College
Hillside Christian College
Swan View Senior High School
Weld Square Primary School
We’ll be tracking the competition and providing advice to the schools throughout the competition and you can follow the action on our Twitter stream: @GreensenseView.
Globally, the building sector contributes to about 40% of the world’s energy consumption and 30% of greenhouse gas emissions. Within Australia the building sector accounts for 19% of energy consumption and 23% of greenhouse gas emissions. Clearly we need to start making our buildings “healthy” by finding innovative ways to reduce the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions they are responsible for.
The National Strategy on Energy Efficiency (NSEE) has been designed to improve the minimum standards of energy efficiency to households and business by accelerating the introduction and take up of new energy efficient technologies. Part of this involves the creation of an outcomes based National Building Energy Standard-Setting, Assessment and rating Framework. The DCC has just released a discussion paper relating to this with comments closing on the 7th May.
At Greensense, we recognise the need to have “healthy” buildings which is why we have just released Greensense View: our real time, wireless energy sensing and interactive dashboard tool designed to assist in behavioural change of building users to drive energy efficiency. While we support the NSEE we are keen to work with companies who want to start making practical changes now — if that is you then we would love to hear from you.
Sunday evening’s TV news featured a story that 500 homes in Perth would participate in a trial to receive real-time energy meters in their homes. These energy meters allow residents to see how much electricity is being used across the whole house at any instant in time.
This is a great initiative, and I advocate this type of technology for a number of reasons.
One of the main problems with trying to reduce electricity use is that it is difficult to see exactly when and where electricity is being used. Most people know that devices can use significant amounts of electricity, even when in stand-by mode, but the question is, how are you supposed to know how much each of your devices use?
This kind of meter gives you the ability to turn on and off devices around the home and determine the effect on total electricity consumption in real-time. This then gives you the ability to make an informed decision about how and when you use your devices.
However, there is a much more important benefit. The simple act of providing direct feedback to users of their energy use can achieve a reduction in that energy use by a significant amount. The news story claims up to 25% reduction. A report titled The Effectiveness Of Feedback On Energy Consumption published by University of Oxford, Environmental Change Institute (2006) states up to 15%. Regardless of the exact figure, behaviour change can be triggered just by providing better information.
How can this cross over into the business world?
Many companies are planning to implement energy efficiency programmes as part of EEO, in preparation for the CPRS, or simply to save money in these difficult economic times. Changing people’s behaviour is one of the most powerful ways to implement energy efficiency.
If your business is interested in innovative use of real-time electricity monitoring, or other strategies for energy efficiency in the corporate world, please contact us here at Greensense.
