Photo by Rachel Cotterman '10

Pulsing glass orbs were installed in the lobbies of six dorms during spring break, greeting returning students with the newest and most colorful feature of the Campus Resource Monitoring System. These peculiar devices, called Energy Orbs, change colors in response to a dorm's energy use.

A team of students and faculty members introduced the orbs to coincide with Ecolympics, an environmentally minded contest aimed at reducing energy and waste in residence halls. Organized by students in the course Environment in Society , Ecolympics builds on Oberlin's annual Dorm Energy Competition. The contest runs through April 26.

The orbs are the latest feature of the Campus Resource Monitoring System, a web site that continuously measures and displays electricity use in 16 dorms and 12 residential houses. On the web site, students can view consumption trends and compare their use with other dorms. The site also displays the environmental and economic costs of electricity in meaningful ways, such as the rates of greenhouse gas emissions, gallons of gas, miles driven, and dollars spent.

Because electricity is invisible, the orbs are an innovative breakthrough. Like a crystal ball, they make electricity visible by translating basic consumption information into a spectrum of colors, says John Peterson, associate professor of environmental studies and Biology.

Sophomore engineering student Adam Hull, who works on the computing and technology side of the monitoring system, and a team of students adapted the Energy Orbs from a commercial product known as an Ambient Orb, a frosted glass desktop device that glows different colors to display real-time stock market information. The orb can be configured wirelessly to track individual stocks, personal portfolios, or any other "ambient information." It's a way of alleviating "information overload" by moving data off a computer screen and into our present environment.

With sophomore Alex Totoiu and junior Michael Brooks, Hull modified both the hardware and the software to convert the orbs into energy tracking displays. They also built the Plexiglas boxes that encase the orbs, which are currently installed in Fairchild, Talcott, Langston, Dascomb, Lord/Saunders, and Asia House.

At the low end, when a dorm is consuming half its normal electricity use, the orb glows green. It shifts to yellow when consumption reaches a typical rate, and then bright red when electricity use doubles. Petersen says he doesn't know of other colleges or universities using the orb technology, making Oberlin a pioneer in adapting them for energy use.

  "At a minimum, we hope the orbs will help people be more aware of their energy use," says Hull, of Westerville, Ohio, who is applying to Caltech and Columbia University engineering schools to complete his 3-2 engineering degree. "At least it will be on their minds. By making that connection, they'll still occasionally remember that they're using energy — that energy is a resource and we're using it all the time. We want to get that in people's heads and provide some useful feedback when the orbs change color."

Electricity use in the six dorms that have orbs will be compared with the dorms that don't, says Petersen. If the results are positive, the College may install orbs in more buildings.

Cindy Frantz, associate professor of psychology, has conducted surveys to measure students' opinions and beliefs about electricity, specifically in four areas: personal relationship/connection to nature, level of community in dorms, beliefs and knowledge of electricity consumption, and comfort with technology (for instance, how often individuals use the Internet).