Energy Dashboard to Help Campus Curb Appetite for Power

After an extensive period of testing, researchers have launched an Internet portal to showcase the real-time measurement and visualization of energy use on the University of California, San Diego campus. The UC San Diego Energy Dashboard allows users to see up-to-the-second information on a structure-by-structure basis for 60 of the largest buildings on the La Jolla campus. The data is provided by UC San Diego Physical Plant Services from over 200 energy meters providing energy usage at the building level. The portal also features information coming from roughly 40 individual power meters that measure energy consumption in the office, e.g., a computer and monitor drawing power from a single socket. A denser deployment of meters, which would measure and display individuals? energy use, is currently under planning and development. 'As a campus we have made a major commitment to sustainability and green practices,' said Gary Matthews, Vice Chancellor of Resource Management and Planning, who has championed sustainability projects on the campus and helped support deployment of meters that are transmitting energy usage data from individual buildings to the portal. ?The Energy Dashboard is a useful tool for tracking and comparing energy use, and as the campus deploys more meters at the office level, our faculty, students and staff will be able to track their own usage ? and modify behaviors that can lead to meaningful changes at the personal as well as campus levels.