CU - Building Dashboard Technology
Aug 4th, 2008 by rlsorbe
This past July, CU Boulder installed Building Dashboards in two campus buildings, Baker and Libby Hall. You might be wondering, what are Building Dashboards? Made by Lucid Design Group, the dashboard is a resource that fosters a unique approach to energy conservation and education. It is a user-friendly system to track energy performance and ratings in real time. The goal for these dashboards are to help educate individuals about their day to day energy consumption via an array of visible and easily interpretable images. This web-based technology renders the environmental performance of buildings, providing information to compare current data to historical data, as well as compare one building’s energy use to another.
In addition to energy data, this dashboard provides information about the building and it’s green features, as well as a tutorial to show how the dashboard works and retrieves data. Dashboards can be customized to each building and client needs, as they are currently installed throughout a number of other University campuses, commercial buildings, and residential homes. The best way to fully understand the power of these dashboards is to check them out for yourself. Below are links to systems that are currently installed, where you can interact with this data.
What I like most about this innovation is that it can be used by anyone who has access a computer. You don’t need to be an engineer, environmentalist, or an energy expert to gain knowledge of the building’s consumption. This is an incredible tool that will help individuals to better understand their footprint, and hopefully become more conscious and aware to better manage their own consumption. It will be interesting to see how the student population at CU interacts with this system, and if they are able to decrease their energy consumption by becoming more aware of their usage.
Building Dashboards:
University of Colorado at Boulder - Libby Hall
University of Vermont - Davis Hall
Emory - Turman Hall
More information on Building Dashboard - Lucid Design Group Brochure