Stephen Roller has practiced his pitch.
He stands in a white dress shirt, black tie and pants before CEOs of Triangle-based companies, before management alumni, before professors, faculty and students with the same message — real-time energy monitoring is the next green step.
The product he’s talking about is PackPulse, a Web site that translates data collected from 15 campus buildings in a “more human way.” Every five seconds, real-time energy meters send the amount of energy a building is using to computers, which then convert the data and submit it to PackPulse, a Web site open to the public. (Click here for a building-by-building energy analysis.)
And he’s really trying to sell it.
Though Roller wrote the code that converts real-time data into easily readable graphs, and although Facilities has installed the meters, the team of students who developed PackPulse still need funding for LCD screens that can project the live data to residence halls and buildings.
“Our eventual goal is to really see this technology permeate through the University and really help the University make smarter environmental decisions,” Roller, a junior in computer science, said. “It gives you an idea for when the actual day closes up.”
In the wake of a 5 to 7 percent University-wide budget cut, cutting energy rather than personnel costs is one
“We need to look everywhere we can, and we want to look anywhere that has people last,” Jeffrey Braden, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, said. “We want to keep instructors. We want to keep support staff so students can get advising. Anything that makes us looks for cuts other than people, we’re eager to pursue.”
Larry Nielsen, provost and executive vice chancellor, said the University is not considering eliminating Friday classes to save energy costs. He was not available for comment on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday to discuss whether it would be possible for certain colleges to cut Friday classes while others continue a five-day week, nor to discuss moving all night classes to one or two buildings.
Eliminating Friday classes would be tricky, but not impossible, according to Vice Provost and Registrar Louis Hunt. About 20 percent of undergraduate students have already stopped signing up for Friday classes.
“The trick to get anything going here would be figuring out how it can be politically palatable,” he said. “We can’t say, ‘Sorry, we need a bunch of money to build more classrooms because we don’t use them half the week.’ We have to make sure they utilize all potential Monday through Thursday.”
Avoiding Friday classes is something Emily Jones, a junior in management, has been trying to do since her first year here. She was unable to secure a purely Monday to Thursday schedule as a freshman or sophomore, but managed to make the ideal schedule this semester and the fall semester.
“I like having a three-day weekend. This semester and for next semester it was easier, probably because I am signing up for smaller classes,” Jones said. “I will take a later class to avoid taking class on Fridays.”
Hunt said Registration & Records standardized the Monday/Wednesday schedule about two years ago in an effort to free up classroom technology used daily from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., a slot in which 60 percent of classes are taught.
“More and more people want technology. If you’re willing to teach at 8 a.m., we’ve got that capacity. If you’re willing to teach at 3 p.m., we’ve got that capacity,” Hunt said. “Students are more willing to go later in the day if it’s only two days a week. And it’s easier for faculty. For me, it’s a little easier to get the kids on the bus and get here at 8:30.”
A natural progression toward effective classrooms — that is, classes that are taught near their departments, have technology available to them and are filled almost to capacity — has enhanced Monday through Thursday class options. However, Hunt said it may not be possible to move all classes away from Friday.
“I’m not sure if you can get rid of Friday all together, and I’m not sure that you would want to, either,” he said. “Unless I change something else and increase utilization outside the 10-to-2 time period, it’s hard to imagine that you could fit it into four days.”
He said there are other ways to reduce energy use on campus outside of efforts like LED lights and motion-triggered light sensors in classrooms. One of those options, he said, could be cutting Friday classes for certain colleges, enabling buildings to use bare bones energy for three days instead of two. Another could be moving night classes to one space.
“By having dedicated spaces, I think you alleviate some of those problems,” Hunt said. “It’d be really nice to have a classroom building that has limited entrances for night classes. Similarly, if you had a classroom building open longer, you could move to a place that’s open. That way, having specialized spaces might contribute to energy savings.”
This is where PackPulse comes in.
Since utility workers usually collect data from about 550 campus buildings once a month, according to Ed Sekmistrz, energy management engineer for the Office of Energy Management, University employees cannot tell how much energy a building is using at a certain time of the day.
“Our utility meter read operation is similar to a home or apartment — where meters are read once a month,” Sekmistrz wrote in an e-mail. “By reading meters once during the month, you cannot distinguish the difference in utility usage for week ends versus business days during the week.”
Real-time meters monitor energy use every five seconds, so officials can evaluate how much it costs each student to keep a building open at certain times of the day.
For instance, if seventy students use Tompkins Hall between 2 and 6 p.m. Friday, officials will be able to take the energy used in that time period and assess if it is cost efficient to keep that building open during those hours.
“A real-time monitoring system is the only way to evaluate something like that,” PackPulse business manager Janine Largen said. “You can monitor energy use per day, per week, per semester, to any correlation you’re trying to do. The product is completely conducive to that.”