Maximizing Energy Savings Through Building Occupant Engagement: A Case for Real-Time Energy Monitoring

New energy efficiency opportunities in buildings
In the United States electricity consumed in buildings represents 2/3 of all electricity consumed, equating to roughly 10% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Americans spend 90% of their lives in these buildings. How we build buildings, and how people act in those buildings has a tremendous impact on the world economy and ecology.

In the world of commercial building energy efficiency, there are two general categories of energy efficiency measures used to reduce energy and operating costs of buildings. The first involves upgrades or substitutions of equipment (lighting, HVAC systems, etc). The second involves operational changes such as modifying HVAC set points, or checking scheduling and economizer cycles. The first category is retrofits, and the second category is low- or no-cost operational improvements; both are in the purview of the facility manager. A third category is emerging, however, which is often overlooked and which does not revolve around the facility manager: behavior change on the part of building occupants.

Historically, commercial energy efficiency measures have focused on HVAC and lighting, but there are several reasons why occupant behavior may be just as important. First, there is some evidence that “plug loads” (that is, most electrical uses besides HVAC and lighting) are increasing over time. According to the Department of Energy’s 2003 Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS), plug loads account for 34% of overall electricity consumption in commercial offices. Based on empirical data from Lucid’s customers, we’ve found from 30% to 50% of total electricity use in offices comes from plug loads. Another compounding factor may be that as HVAC and lighting systems continue to improve in performance, the loads controlled by occupants grow as a percentage of overall consumption. Plug loads are a significant and largely untapped resource.

In order to maximize the effectiveness of any efficiency measure – whether traditional or behavioral – it is important to understand where a building is consuming energy so you can target those systems that are consuming the most. Monitoring energy consumption by end-uses, specific building systems or floors/wings is a key component to any efficiency program, allowing you to target effectively and measure the impact of interventions.

Making Consumption Patterns Visible and Social
The Building Dashboard platform is a hosted software solution that monitors energy and water use in buildings in real time. Building occupants, managers and visitors can view, compare and share resource information online or on display screens. Building Dashboard provides feedback to educate, motivate and empower building occupants to reduce their consumption.

In 2010, Lucid Design Group released Building Dashboard Network, the first social network for buildings. In the Network, organizations and buildings have profile pages with various apps and widgets that allow occupants to set budgets, track periods of highest use, host reduction competitions and communicate to other occupants about conservation measures. By linking resource use with other social destinations, like Facebook, the Network creates a compelling social context that further motivates users to reduce consumption.

The results have been very encouraging. In colleges and universities, offices and other commercial building spaces, this tool has had a profound effect on how people think and behave.

In the case of DPR Construction, a national general contracting firm with a strong sustainability ethic, Building Dashboard is helping them meet their goal of a net-zero energy office building in San Diego, California. After occupying the building they discovered that plug loads were 30-40% higher than they had predicted. They used the Dashboard to engage employees to find savings. Input came from all divisions of the company, and facilities changes as well as personal behaviors were modified.

Similar results were seen in the Boulder office of Google Inc., where electricity consumption was reduced 8% by focusing on behavior changes related to equipment left on during the nights and on weekends. In the San Francisco offices of ARUP, the global engineering design firm, employees were able to reduce plug load and lighting consumption by 10% on average over a two-week competition.

Building Occupant Engagement
Using Social Norms to Reduce Energy Consumption
Human behavior is often overlooked in the areas of architecture and environmental performance. There are technical and design-related solutions to minimize resource consumption, but there are behavioral issues as well.

In 2007 professor Wesley Shultz at California State University conducted a study in San Marcos California on residential energy use. His team measured the effects of providing modified electricity bills to consumers that included information how much energy they consumed compared to their neighbors. On average those households who had received the normative bills consumed 2% less than those who had not received the new bills.[1]

Our technology is aimed at encouraging greater interaction between occupants and the built environment, and promoting a greater understanding of the invisible flows of energy that power our spaces. The more visible we can make energy use, the more attention it will get. The “building of the future” that we envision is not necessarily a new form with new materials, but rather a highly interactive structure in which energy use is everyone’s problem and requires building occupants’ consideration to manage it effectively.

There are a number of ways to engage occupants with real-time data to motivate them to change their behavior and reduce consumption. Lucid has experimented with a number of different programs, focusing on energy reduction competitions that have been used to reduce consumption between 5-45% in buildings over a limited period of time.

In the San Francisco offices of ARUP, the global engineering firm, Building Dashboard has allowed them to monitor lighting, servers, HVAC, and plug loads separately, highlighting areas where efficiency efforts should be focused. During an inaugural inter-office competition; ARUP was able to reduce plug load consumption 10% over a two-week period.  The competition also motivated them to reexamine operational aspects of the office, change settings on idle equipment and shut off computers during non-office hours.

Energy reduction competitions can be hosted on a large scale as well. In 2010, Lucid hosted the inaugural Campus Conservation Nationals, an electricity and water reduction competition among college and universities across North America. During a three-week period the residence halls on 40 campuses competed to see who could reduce the most. The winning school was able to reduce consumption 21%, and the competition saved more than 500,000 kilowatt-hours.

Future Applications: Monetizing Savings for Building Occupants

There are many exciting ways building information and social networks can be leveraged to influence the behavior of occupants and managers. Creating a cultural norm focused on resource conservation in buildings could have a similar impact that school recycling programs had on the dramatic increase of recycling in the 1980s. Competitions, socially normative messaging, and greater dialogue between facility managers and occupants are all important approaches in enabling, and sustaining, conservation.

How Demand Response Works
Another method with future potential involves direct monetary incentives to occupants from their conservation efforts. Demand Response, for example, is a way of getting paid by a utility or electric grid operator to reduce electricity use during peak consumption periods. Utility companies are required to provide enough power to cover peak periods, which requires expensive additional infrastructure used only a few hours during the year. While not the only form of “negawatts” that have been monetized, demand response is one of the leading examples of getting paid to conserve, and an interesting concept to ponder in the context of building occupant behavior.

How does demand response work? DR companies, also called “aggregators,” sign up large commercial and industrial (C&I) facilities and pay them annually for the ability to shave load when called. During peak periods, such as hot summer afternoons, demand response companies are paid for the reductions delivered during the demand response event. The reductions could be anything from temporarily cutting power to refrigerated warehouses (making sure to keep the doors closed), increasing setpoints on thermostats or switching off unnecessary lighting. There are a variety of jurisdictions offering demand response with differing characteristics, but in North America the payments for curtailment – which is really a payment for avoided power plant usage – are from $24 to $160 per kilowatt curtailed, depending upon the geographic location and program.

The ability of demand response companies to reduce consumption is based on the number of subscribers and the average achievable curtailment per customer. Currently, aggregators focus on large C&I customers, who, through facilities changes, reduce consumption upon request.

Setting the Stage for Social Demand Response
Voluntary DR programs coupled with a real-time dashboard and social networking offer an opportunity to achieve deeper cuts in electricity use. Interesting questions arise about how we can use normative messages and social networks to increase participation in energy reduction programs on a larger scale: What if a utility were able to send a message to subscribers in an area about an upcoming demand response event and incentivize savings at $5 per kW reduced? What would happen if that information were announced using social networks that allowed you to see who among your friends and neighbors was participating in conservation behaviors? What if those incentives were coupled with real-time feedback as to how your collective action was impacting the grid? Demand response is leading the way in putting money in customers’ pockets in exchange for temporarily cutting demand.  It seems logical to extend these incentives to building occupants if their collective actions are effective, timely and measurable. Our greater connectedness through social media may make conservation spread virally. After all, if all of your Facebook friends are turning off their air conditioning and getting paid to do it, wouldn’t you want to join in?

[1] “Using Social Norms to Reduce Household Energy Consumption.” Schultz P. W., Nolan J. M., Cialdini R. B., Goldstein N. J., Griskevicius Vladas (2007).  The Constructive, Destructive, and Reconstructive Power of Social Norms. Psychological Science, 18(5), 429-434.