If you’ve ever visited Schneider Hall, chances are you’ve noticed the grand piano in the lobby. The piano was gift from the WKU Department of Music when Schneider Hall reopened in 2007. On a given day, you can stroll through the second floor lobby and hear a variety of songs–classic, contemporary, and even a holiday song or two when it’s ninety degrees outside.
If you work in the office–like I do–you’ll often hear the faint tones of those melodies through a floor of brick and concrete. To my amusement and amazement, I thought I heard someone playing “Friday” on the piano today. Naturally, I left my office to go upstairs and check it out. It turns out that first-year student Duncan Wood was offering students in the lobby a soulful rendition of the pop meme of 2011.
He, as well as the self-styled “Bro Floor Chorus,” agreed to do a performance on camera, which I offer as a cap to your day and the first month of classes this year.
As students in Western Kentucky University residence halls turn off and unplug, take shorter showers and make other energy conservation measures in this month’s “Reduce Your Use!” competition, they will be able to see how their halls rank thanks to a real-time energy monitoring and display website.
WKU’s Building Dashboard® designed by Lucid Design Group (http://www.wku.edu/housing/dashboard.htm) provides information on energy use for each residence hall, converting kilowatt hours to relatable units such as pails of coal and hamburgers.
Students not only will be able to track which building is winning, but also see whether efforts such as turning off all lights in a building make a big difference.
“The dashboard will help us save energy, but more importantly, it is a great awareness tool,” Sustainability Coordinator Christian Ryan-Downing said. “It empowers us to see immediately the results of our conservation efforts and makes it much more fun and engaging. The dashboard is like a new toy. I keep showing it to everyone.”
Ryan-Downing said energy feedback websites are proving to have great results on college campuses. Reports from both Lucid Design and universities and colleges using the technology say that real-time feedback on energy use is resulting in energy use reductions from 10 percent to 50 percent.
Before the software and dashboard could do their work, residence hall energy meters had to be connected to the centralized computer software system that the WKU Energy Management Team uses to remotely read and control heating, cooling and ventilation in many campus buildings. This system allows the Building Dashboard® to “read” the meters and provide real-time feedback.
“The Dashboard system has an integrated competition module which allows us to easily manage ‘Reduce Your Use!’” said David Baskett, coordinator for Facilities for Housing and Residence Life. “The competition module allows me to set up the parameters of the competition and from there it runs itself. Students will be able to see their hall’s standing along with other real time data by simply going to the Dashboard website. By allowing the residents to see real time data we hope this encourages a healthy competitive spirit and educates them on energy conservation.”
