By Greg Tanski, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP BD+C, Architectural Designer, Cannon Design
A recent study by some of my former professors at Carnegie Mellon took a look at the impact of providing feedback in an energy dashboard form to workers and studying how it impacted overall energy consumption. Workers who know how much energy they are using tend to adjust their habits to use less.
So far, the indications are promising. The Carnegie Mellon team found that two out of three sites in an initial small-scale study saved about 30% of energy compared with a baseline. The third site, a government research lab, showed no real savings because the lab’s policy is to keep its computers running at all times.
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