Energy Dashboard almost ready to go...

The UCLan energy dashboard is almost ready to go live! http://www.teamenergy.com/news/energy-dashboards-at-uclan/ a short article about the JISC project has been included in the Team Energy news letter.

Project update - dashboard design and survey results

The development of the dashboard is now underway.  The company developing it for us will have the spec drafted for our approval on Wednesday next week (29^th June).   In addition to the original plan of a dashboard, we are also developing a desktop gadget.  This will use the IP address of the PC the user is on to create a rev counter style display that will show the energy consumption of that building in comparison to that week the previous year.  The gadget will change colour depending on the performance i.e. if the energy consumption is greater than 10% less than that week the previous year the colour will be green, if it is between +-10% amber and above 10% greater than the previous year red.  The users will have the option to change the building the gadget is showing data for.

The gadget will also link through to the dashboard.  The dashboard template is displayed below.

The dashboard will show the overall performance of the campus rotating through £/CO2/kWh/m2.  Users will be able to click on this to drill down into the performance table and further down to compare buildings and time periods.

The next section will be a series of rolling posters advertising key messages and events.  Clicking on these posters will take the user to more information.

The next section will be the UCLan Green Team twitter feed.  This will be set up so users and UCLans’ tweets will be displayed.  There are some concerns about how we manage this in case inappropriate tweets are displayed.  We could set up a feed that allows the UCLan Green Team to approve the tweets from other users before they are published.

The next section will be a method through which the users can email the Green Team to report any issues or good practice.

Finally the campus map will show the RAG for each building on campus, displayed on a campus map. Clicking on the image will open a larger map and from here users will be able to drill down into the Sigma Six system to compare buildings and timelines.

In addition we have completed the iBuilding surveys to develop the baseline for comparison later in the project.  The results were very positive.

 Staff survey

The staff survey was completed by 139 staff members with a broad cross section of schools and departments represented.

The key head lines were that 83.5 % of staff felt they had a responsibility to manage / reduce energy consumption on campus, 10.8% were unsure and only 5.8% of staff said no.

The staff were provided a series of statements and were asked to state to which they agreed, as shown the graph below.

When asked if they encourage others to reduce / manage their energy consumption while on campus, 40.3% said yes, 31.7% said sometimes and 28.1% said no.

When asked if UCLan did enough to manage its energy consumption only 11.5 % said yes, 51.1% said no and 37.4% said not sure. A lot of the justification focused on unnecessary lighting or lights left on when rooms / buildings were not in use.  Many staff were advocates of the motion sensor lighting. 

The main suggestions given for how UCLan could improve the work it does around energy consumption  were;

•       Resolve heating issues

•       Stop leaving items on charge

•       Review lighting

•       Make reducing energy consumption interesting

•       Two way communication / culture change

•       Better recycling facilities

Generally the staff seemed interested in the dashboard – although it should the noted that the option of not having a dashboard was not included.   The most popular requirement for the dashboard was to be able to highlight good or bad practice.  Next was energy and water consumption of individual buildings, followed by ways to reduce energy consumption, cost of energy consumption and what UCLan is doing to reduce energy consumption.

Student survey

The survey was completed by 56 students from Schools across the university.

The students were asked to what extent they agreed with a set of statements and their answers are shown in the graph below.

When asked to what extent they agreed with the statement “I have a responsibility for energy consumption on campus” 17% strongly agreed, 39.6% agreed, 5.7% were unsure, 1.9% disagreed and 9.4% of students strongly disagreed.

When asked if energy consumption on campus affected them directly 58.6 % felt they were directly affected and listed;

–      Money spent on energy could be spent on resources

–      Environment

–      Cost of items such as food on campus increasing to cover the bill

–      Rent in Halls

–      Fees

–      Reputation of UCLan

–      Potential restrictions in energy

When asked if UCLan did enough to reduce its energy consumption 13.2% said yes, 18.9% said no and 69.8% were unsure.  Answers given included;

–      Solar panels, sensor lights, recycling and electric vehicles were examples of good practice

–      Some felt UCLan was doing something but it wasn’t enough

–      Raising awareness and education were recommended

–      Lots commented on auto switch off / sleep modes and sensors being needed

–      Reducing printing – staff and students

–      Academics having responsibility for switching off lights

–      Plasmas not posters

When asked how UCLan could improve energy consumption they uggested;

•       Encourage people to switch off lights / computers / PCs and have more motion sensors

•       Reduce number of PCs / Printers at quiet times

•       More solar power

•       Caps on electricity included in rent

•       eSubmission of forms / assessments so students do not have to drive in

•       Let students design green energy systems / power off devices

•       Online lecture notes

Finally the students were asked what functionality they would be interested in seeing on the energy dashboard.  Again a not interested in the dashboard option was not included.  The top answers were; cost of energy and water consumption, how UCLan is reducing energy consumption, comparison between buildings, energy and water use in individual buildings and highlighting good and bad practice.

Little update

We are currently confirming the layout and functionality for the iBuilding dashboards.  This includes identifying what the icon is staff will see as they login to the UCLan network, what widgets / web parts the main dashboard will consist of and what data should be included in the lower levels users can drill down to.

A survey has been launched to all students to try and establish their current attitudes towards energy consumption on campus.  So far the survey has had 42 results.  The survey briefly explores the students’ energy consumption habits and explores their attitude towards energy consumption on campus. The results so far have been interesting - quite a mix in the answers to "How do you think levels of energy consumption at UCLan directly affect you?"

This survey will be repeated after the dashboard has been launched as part of the evaluation.

First glimpse at the potential dashboard

Yesterday we had the first glimpse at our potential dashboard. The product looks like it will do everything we need with drill down into building data, looking at energy consumption in several unit I.e kph, £'s, etc.

We are starting to realise the potential of the dashboard, it is likely that the academics and students in the School of Built and Natural Environment are likely to be interested in getting more data out of the dashboard than others.

The next stage is to review the demo dashboards in more detail to ensure they meet our requirements before we give the go ahead to develop the dashboard with this product. The new system we want to use will not be able to be hosted at UCLan until November, however we can develop and launch the dashboard with the providers hosting it in the interim.

A question for you?
How do others think staff and students might like to use the dashboard?

Start up programme meeting

The programme start up meeting was really interesting. It was great to see so many good and interesting projects relating to greening ICT. As an addition to our project I was really interested to hear about the issues around the purchase of goods. Those with budgets for the purchase are looking at immediate purchase price, however those in estates are looking at the long term cost of goods - the life cost.

I am pleased to say that I had a very productive conversation about this and we are discussing how the life cost of a product could be considered at purchase. Hopefully it's another message we can spread when we launch the iBuilding dashboard. If anyone includes this on purchase processes please let me know!

The start up meeting

The first project team meeting has taken place and the project is now underway.  The team in Facilities Management are developing the business requirements for the new dashboard to enable us to develop an “ideal template” with no software influence to release to the HE sector as an example or starting point for similar projects. 

The decisions to be made are; where will this dashboard sit? How do we ensure it is easy to access, that people are aware of it and people look at it without making it appear in a way that will frustrate users? Once we have our ideal dashboard created, we will bring in the software suppliers to start developing it.

Evaluation will soon be underway to create a baseline for us to measure the success of the project against.  This will include assessing the current energy consumption of buildings and the attitudes of staff and students towards energy consumption on campus.

The start of iBuilding

iBuilding is funded by JISC through the Greening ICT Programme.  iBuilding will see the development and roll out of dashboards that will be used to enable staff and students access to data about the energy consumption of buildings on the UCLan campus.  The dashboard will also enable two way communication between Facilities Management, who are responsible for the estate, and users of the dashboard to enable them to become more actively involved in managing UCLan's energy consumption. 

This blog will be used to track the development of the project.