Our presentation from the EAUC 2014 conference on the impact of energy dashboards - using examples from DMU's JISC funded projects, EU Smartspaces and the NUS's student switch off campaign - we present lessons learnt from energy visualisation in the University sector.

1. Estates and Operations

2. From Manatees to
Smileys – How energy
visualisation can work
for you

3. Estates and
Operations
1. DUALL
2. GREENVIEW
3. SMARTSPACES
4. NUS Student Switch-Off & SAVES

4. Theinvisibilityofenergy

5. 1)
2)
3)

6. Estates and
Operations

7. Key challenges
1) Creative visualisations
2) Meaningful data

8. creative visualisation
Healthy buildings = happy animals

9. Quantifying Energy Performance
A building is happy when consumption is in the green zone
A building is neutral when consumption is in the yellow zone
A building is sad when consumption is in the red zone
Consumption (and normality) is dependent on ‘time of week’
Most weeks are similar but all weeks are different
It is possible to create a normal weekly profile

10. • Saving Energy in Europe’s Public Buildings Using ICT
• 01/2012 – 12/2014
• 11 pilot cities in 8 countries – 26 partners
– United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Turkey, Serbia
http://www.smartspaces.eu

11. Interactive interface

12. Simplified performance indicator
http://smartspaces.dmu.ac.uk

13. Comparable across buildings
http://smartspaces.dmu.ac.uk

14. Live, half-hourly feedback
http://smartspaces.dmu.ac.uk

15. Student switch off - energy display to date
Estates and
Operations

16. Challenges with current data
• Time between students
performing an action and their
awareness of the impact
• Time for energy manager to
compile data and SSO team to
analyse it
Estates and
Operations
Next Steps
• University of Bristol SGF
project – linking in with
success from University of
British Columbia
• EU-funded project (SAVES)

17. University of Bristol
& British Columbia
Estates and
Operations

18. EU-funded ‘saves’ project
Estates and
Operations
• 4 new countries running their own version of Student Switch Off
• 7 UK Unis (Bath, Cranfield, DMU, Northampton, QMUL, UWE and Worcester)
• Online dashboard allowing competition between halls across Universities and
potentially twinning of halls
• First pan-European student energy-saving competition

19. Estates and
Operations
Lesson learnt . . .
Engaging users (findings from DUALL):
Difficult to engage already busy staff
Even harder to get on-line engagement
Evaluation:
Attributing behaviour change to such an intervention like Greenview is problematic (nb.
picking up small changes, & issue of occupancy for example)
Without senior commitment and sincere staff engagement and collaboration mere
information provision in the form of dashboards is impotent.
Creative, but not too creative!
Users still found numerical and easily understood representations of energy useful –
especially in a Technology/Engineering building
Users wanted guidance for users to help them behave differently with regard to energy
use (need for information provision).
People want to compete!

20. Discussion
1. Do you have a dashboard, or are you currently looking
into it?
2. Discuss your own experiences of engaging staff and
students with energy dashboards?
3. What do you think are (or what have you found to be)
the main barriers to behaviour change around energy
saving behaviours?
4. In short – do you think they work, and do they have a
future?
Estates and
Operations

21. Estates and
Operations
Aha moment
• Simple behaviour changes can save up to 20% of a building’s energy
consumption. This is worth doing!
• Need to be part of a wider behaviour change programme
• They are not a ‘magic bullet’ but . . . A vital ‘tool’ in the energy saving
tool box!

22. Estates and
Operations
Further Reading