Metering

Credit: splorp CC-BY-NC-ND Gas Meters

Engineering and Utilities (E&U) is providing the University with a powerful new tool to better manage energy consumption. New hardware, software, and metering are being installed to offer real-time energy usage information which will ultimately enable building operators to improve the efficiency of their buildings. E&U is in the process of connecting the system to dozens of buildings to continuously monitor steam, electricity, and chilled water.

The effort began with a pilot project that included a dozen facilities - 60 Oxford Street, Spangler, and Maxwell Dworkin to name a few. E&U (with help from Applied Technologies) first had to test the system on the different information technology (IT) networks across campus since each has different requirements. To access real-time data, some of the older building meters had to then be replaced with newer “intelligent” meters.

Since the pilot project, E&U has added nearly 40 buildings as part of Phase 1 and, when Phase 2 is completed this spring, the number should rise to nearly 120. At that point, E&U will be able to track more than 80% of the University’s energy consumption (excluding Longwood) in real-time. Gathering up-to-the-second information will give building operators the ability to make informed decisions more rapidly to improve efficiency. This will clearly be a crucial component in the University’s plan to reduce GHG emissions 30% by 2016.

To make the information available to the Harvard community, E&U is utilizing Energy Witness® - the new utility billing and reporting system. Anyone with a Harvard PIN can access it. Just click “Energy Witness®” on the UOS website home page, enter your pin and then click “interval data reports.”