Dorms compete to conserve
The Dorm Energy Competition of last April, inspired by junior Kate Weinberger’s Winter Term project, motivated students across campus to reduce their energy consumption over a two week period. This year, the competition, taken up as two separate honors projects by Weinberger and College senior Vladislav Shunturov and funded by a $10,000 Environmental Protection Agency grant, will combine innovation and experience to make the it more effective. “I have two goals for this years competition,” said Weinberger, a member of campus environmental group Climate Justice and chief organizer of the competition. “First, I’d obviously like to see an overall reduction in energy use. Second, I see this as an opportunity to educate people about energy use and advocate climate change issues.” Between March 10 and 24, participants will be asked to consciously minimize their energy consumption. To broaden the competition’s impact, the organizers have decided to measure the dorms’ water consumption in addition to electricity consumption this year. The consumption levels will be monitored throughout the two week period. The results will be compared to measurements taken from the same dorms over the two weeks preceding the competition. The dorm that has made the greatest change in its energy consumption over the two periods will win. In addition to Weinberger’s organizational efforts, Shunturov and faculty advisor John Petersen, professor of biology and environmental studies, have contributed technological innovations to this year’s competition. “Vladi’s help is definitely the big thing this year, I’m really excited about that,” said Weinberger, referring to the work Shunturov has put into creating a technological aid called a real time feedback system. “I’ve been trying to make innovations to make the competition more exciting for students,” Shunturov said. Shunturov and Petersen applied for and received a $10,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency called the P3 Award in order to develop the real time feedback system, which will be installed in two dorms, Fairchild and Harkness, to monitor the upcoming competition. The system, like the computer monitor in the Adam Joseph Lewis center, will provide immediate feedback with colorful imagery about their energy consumption to participants in Harkness and Fairchild via a computer monitor placed in each lobby. Petersen described what he and Shunturov hope the system will accomplish: “When people use resources, those resources pass them by, but they can’t really visualize what’s happening with it. We’re trying to make invisible flows visible to people.” Shunturov, who, with the help of Petersen and a professional programmer, spent last semester developing the system to work in the dorms, hopes the system will foster comprehension and competition among the participants. “With such a system, you can really facilitate competition because it’s very visible,” he said. “It’s an exciting way to connect people to the building, much better than just looking at the results once a week on the internet.” The dorm energy competition will be the grounds on which to test the utility of the real time feedback system. In the spring, Petersen and Shunturov plan to apply for the second phase of the P3 grant. The $75,000 award would allow Petersen and Shunturov to expand the feedback system to buildings across campus. The campus-wide feedback system, if installed, would allow the administration to better see the benefits of consumption-reducing measures in the same way it will allow participants at Fairchild and Harkness to see the benefits of their energy-saving efforts this year. “The College can do a lot in terms of conserving energy,” Shunturov said. “There is lots of waste on campus open windows, water leaks. Right now, they just can’t analyze the energy and cost efficiently.
“You can’t make such things efficient if you can’t see the
payback. I’m just hoping this will give the administration economic ways
to save resource.”
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