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iBuilding will see the introduction of an ICT system to facilitate communication with staff and students as to the energy consumption of the UCLan campus. The system will be in the form of a dashboard that will share data with users, captured by automatic meter reading (AMR) equipment, and enable users to drill down to data at a building level. The dashboard will enable two way communication between Facilities Management (in particular the team responsible for Environment and Sustainability) and staff and students.
UCLan is committed itself to addressing the issue of sustainability within the University. It is a key focus of area of the Medium Term Strategy (MTS) 2007 – 2017, stating;, “We will be a model international University for sustainability. Our sustainability strategy will ensure that the University becomes a carbon-neutral institution within 20 years. We will also ensure that our students are educated for global citizenship by integrating sustainable development, health and well-being into our curricula”.
The Sustainable Development Strategy, which supports the MTS, outlines the principals UCLan aims to adhere to and the objectives its aims to achieve including;
The objectives of the strategy, relevant to this call are;
UCLan has been very successful in implementing processes and making changes to support the sustainability. In relation to Greening ICT we have; implemented automated PC switch off, full virtualisation of test environments, converted servers to blades and virtualised them, introduced better recycling of books and journals, replaced network switches with more efficient models, created
UCLan Global to allow staff to work from remote locations and access the full University network, opted for e-journals over paper based journals, switched off old servers, introduced online application, enrolment and elective registration and created an e-bidding system for approving bids.
The numerous initiatives and projects undertaken across the university have gained UCLan;
Recently UCLan has installed automatic meter reading (AMR) equipment has been installed to all gas, electric and water meters. The AMRs initially has two purposes, to enable energy consumption to be monitored (every half an hour) so that exception reporting can be carried out and so that UCLan can gain credit on a league table due to be published in relation to the Carbon Reduction Commitment for voluntarily installing this equipment. UCLan has approximately: 30 water meters, 118 gas meters, 12 primary billing electricity meters and 23 electricity sub-meters. Installing sub-metering to meter end use energy helps:
UCLan currently uses energy monitoring and targeting software to log energy invoices and report on consumption. The concern UCLan has is that although the team responsible for environment and sustainability at UCLan use the data affectivity to identify where energy savings can be made, they are a small team within a large organisation and they will be limited with what they can achieve unless they get buy in from the rest of the UCLan staff and students. There have been numerous initiatives and campaigns that try to raise staff awareness of the carbon footprint UCLan is using, from ideas as simple as black balloons identifying the CO2 output of buildings and departments to a wide range of activities during CO2 Awareness week.
Through this project we aim to develop an energy dashboard to be displayed on all PCs within UCLan, to show in real time the energy usage of a building and provide information to staff and students on how they can reduce they energy they use as individuals.
The overall goal of this project is to reduce the energy consumed in UCLan by educating and changing the behaviour of staff and students.
The objectives are;
The aims of the project are;
To change the behaviour of staff and students so they take action to reduce energy consumption by;
To better communication of UCLan’s aims, successes and achievements with regards to reducing energy consumption.
Identify worst practice within the University and align the communication campaign to address it.
UCLan will be working with a leading supplier of utility management software and services in the UK providing solutions across a number of sectors. They have expertise in energy management, software, bureau and consultancy services. The potential company4 identified have developed initial prototypes for dashboards to present energy consumption to stakeholders i.e. to be displayed on dashboards in reception areas. Through this project, UCLan aim to take these dashboards a step further and enable them to be used on desktops of staff and students and to facilitate two way communication. The potential company identified have recently commissioned a consultant with a background in energy, who specialises in influencing behaviours of building occupants, to work with a select group on the requirements and design of such a display. UCLan have been invited to participate in this process based on the aims and objectives we are trying to achieve for this bid.
The outputs of this project are;