A building energy dashboard could be a tool to influence users to be more environmentally conscious by displaying real-time energy consumption. Current commercially available dashboards fall short of their potential as they do not simultaneously address occupant comfort, case specific recommendations or controls. To address this gap, a prototype has been developed for a new ‘state-of-art’ dashboard, the “C3” dashboard. C3 is a common platform for communication, consultancy and control. It is designed to be a personal dashboard for users in commercial buildings. This study presents the opportunities and challenges of developing a user-based energy dashboard that would empower occupants to save more energy.

1. Development of a ‘State-of-the-Art’ Dashboard
Ruchie Kothari
MSSD, Carnegie Mellon University
August 2012
Faculty: Vivian Loftness, Azizan Aziz, Erica Cochran, Peter Scupelli

2. Table of Contents
1. Building Energy Dashboards
2. Limitations of Existing Dashboards
3. Emerging Concepts in Energy Savings
4. Motivation
5. The C3 dashboard
6. Communication : : Interface
7. Consultant : : Recommendations
8. Controls : : Web-Based Actuation
9. Summary
10. Future Research
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3. Building Energy Dashboard
Building • Web-based display of building energy
Environmental
Conditions consumption data
Outdoor
Environmental
Conditions
• Monitors real-time energy consumption
Current
Electricity,
Water, Gas
• Provides history of energy data (hours, days,
Usage months, years)
Example 1: Agilewaves • Projects future energy consumption
• Designed for institutional, commercial and
residential buildings
• Useful to building occupants and facility
Energy Usage
managers
Kwh and Cost
• Developed to influence users to become
Example 2: Energy Management
more energy conscious
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4. Limitations of Existing Dashboards
Monitoring Capabilities
A. Most commercial dashboards only display
building energy data
B. Information restricted to whole building energy
A B consumption
Analysis/Feedback
C. Usually only generic advice given to users
D. Feedback not designed to be understandable to
both building occupants and facility managers
C D
Actuation Capabilities
E. Limited control of building systems /appliances
F. Multiple dashboards to control different building
systems such as temperature, lighting, plug-loads
etc
E F
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5. Emerging Concepts in Energy Savings
Impact of Awareness Impact of Recommendations Impact of Control
Tool: Provide the users with information Tool: Provide users with actions to reduce Tool: Provide users with personal controls
about the building’s energy consumption energy consumption with regular reminders for building equipment in their office
Outcome: 16% to 36% savings in energy Outcome: 6 % energy savings were Outcome: 43% savings were identified in
use are seen during 4 to 12 week observed when users in an office were the IW by providing the users with lighting
competitions between dormitories in provided with regular reminders to turn off control in their personal spaces through
universities computers when not in use dashboards and 64% savings when
provided feedback with control
‘Campus Conservation Nations’ by Lucid Dashboard developers Field study of small office and library by PIER Users provided with manual control of lights in lab study by CBPD
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6. Motivation
• There is a critical need for a new ‘state-of-art’ dashboard to:
– Communicate comfort conditions as well as energy use
– Provide expert recommendations for strategic reduction of energy use
– Provide controls with immediate feedback on energy savings
• Hypothesis:
– Providing users in an office with a personal dashboard with the C3 functions will help
significantly reduce overall energy consumption and will help maintain comfortable
indoor conditions
• Part of GPIC Task 4.5:
• Interdisciplinary Development Team:
– Vivian Loftness, Azizan Aziz, Peter Scupelli, Anthony Rowe, Bertrand Lasternas , Ray Yun,
Flore Marion, Clarence Agbi , Korbinian Breu, Johannes Lechner, Ruchie Kothari
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7. C3 Dashboard
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8. The C3 Dashboard: Communication, Consultant, Control
• Designed to be used by every occupant in a commercial office
• C3 provides an Integrated Platform for:
• Communication = Energy Consumption + Environmental
Settings
• Consultant = Real-Time Case-Specific Recommendations
• Control = All Possible Equipment in Personal Work-Station/
Office
• One dashboard to help manage heating/cooling, lighting, ventilation
as well as plug-loads
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9. Technical Complexities
• Device Interfacing
• Temperature, lighting, ventilation and plug-load
consumption simultaneously and easily
Wireless Plug Meters Manual Controlled Interior Blinds
• Smart Analytics
• Algorithms and databases that provide useful
recommendations and comparisons
Environmental Sensors Personal Environment • Ease of Deployment
Module (PEM)
• Retrofit installations
Hence, a team of electrical engineers, computer scientists,
human-computer-interaction developers, building research
scientists are involved in the project
Monitoring and Control Interface
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10. Communication Complexities
• Data easily understandable
• Suit users with little time to spare to use the
dashboard
• Graphs to address all types of users
• Users with advanced to basic knowledge
• Filter data and display only useful information
• Large amount of data can be displayed on
the dashboard
• Maintain Engagement
Hence, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
experiments are carried out for the dashboard
interface
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11. Experimental Testbed: Intelligent Workspace
7000 sq ft Facility for Testing Building Performance at Carnegie Mellon University
Prototype 1 to be developed for deployment at the IW which has advanced wireless
systems to meter and sub-meter energy usage, sensors for occupants, indoor-outdoor
environmental conditions and actuation systems for heating, cooling, lighting, plug-load
management.
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12. Communication : : INTERFACE
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13. Usability Tests
“Set Dashboard to follow Schedule” The Energy Hog : “ Don’t be One!” Several Usability Tests were carried
6.00 PM out to determine:
• Useful features for C3
• Appropriate graphics to display
information – for understandability
and accuracy
Personas
This Includes:
1. Feature Prioritization Exercises
2. Design Workshops
3. Communication Tests
4. Scenario Development
5. Persona Creation
6. Photo Study
7. Navigation Test
Scenarios Communication Tests
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14. Identifying Useful Features
Exercises to understand-
‘Who’ the users are
‘When’ would the occupants use C3
‘How’ would the occupants use C3
Features:
1. My Dashboard Profile
2. Automatic/Manual Control
Feature 1: My Dashboard Profile 3. Ranking of Recommendations
4. Alerts
5. Comfort Meter
6. My Commitment
7. Ask the Expert
8. Message to Facility Manager…
Feature 2: Automatic/Manual Controls
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15. Designing Informative Graphics
Graphs developed through Communication Tests with Dashboard Development Team as well as End-Users
Step 1: Identify Information Requirements
Step 2: Create graphs based on real-time information
Step 3: Team Test
Step 4: End-User Test
Step 5: Modifications and Final Proposed
Option A: Option B : Proposed :
IEQ with Good-Average-Bad Scale IEQ with Baseline Reference IEQ with Scale + Baseline
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16. Developing the Interface : Earlier Version (Temperature Page)
Interface developed through Feature Prioritization and Navigation Tests with Development Team and End-Users
Temperature Page: Provides information,
feedback and control for heating and
cooling
Item Selection:
Allows user to Item Controls:
select the items Provides item
which he can specifications and
control control options
Environmental
Conditions:
Provides current
as well as
previous
temperature
details
Recommendation: Generated based on existing
conditions and potential energy saving. Ranked in
order from most effective to least effective
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17. Developing the Interface : Latest Version (Temperature Page)
It was interesting to note that the development team and the end-users had different rankings for the features
Dashboard Team End-Users
Energy Consumption Graph 1. Comparison To
Recommendations 2. Recommendations
My Environmental Settings 3. My Environmental Settings
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18. LATEST Version
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19. Home Page : Energy + Environment (summary)
Home Page Profile
Outdoor Conditions
Overall Energy Ask the Expert
Consumption
Local Control
Indoor Environmental
Conditions
Comparison to Office
Average and Office
Best Practice
My Overall Energy
Consumption
My Overall Comfort
Meter My Office Ranking
Recommendations:
Ranked and from all
categories
My Commitment
Detailed Report
Share On
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20. Category Page (HVAC) : Energy + Environment (detail)
Temperature Page
Energy Consumption
for Heating and
Temperature Settings Cooling
Comparison to Office
Average and Office
Best Practice
Short Term
Recommendations: Long term
Ranked and only Recommendations
from heating and
cooling category
Recommendations
Link to All Sorted by Energy
Recommendations Savings
Voting Meter
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21. Category Page (Plugloads) : Energy (appliance break-down)
Plugloads Page Plugloads Profile
Historic data
Energy Consumption Local Control
Break-Up for
Appliances Flexible Graph Selection
Energy Usage Details
Recommendations:
Ranked and for
Plugloads only
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22. Consultant : : RECOMMENDATIONS
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23. Recommendations
In order to generate expert recommendations, it is important to take into consideration:
1. Historical Inferences Base on individual’s usage pattern
Base on typical appliance characteristics and
2. Database Inferences
possible recommendations
Base on office/appliance sensor, actuation
3. Community Inferences
capabilities
Base on indoor, outdoor environmental
4. Environmental Inferences
conditions and user preferences
A methodology has been created to generate recommendations for plug-load management. This
methodology can be modified to provide recommendations for other categories.
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24. Decision Tree for Recommendations
Algorithm to identify state of
appliances 1
User to specify usage
requirements 2
Identification of possible
recommendations from database
3
Power input from software +
time input from user
4
Sort recommendations based on
historical, community, database 5
inferences
Alert 1/Recommendations based
on analysis 6
Algorithm to check for
implementation
7
Loop continues based on check 8
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25. Energy Savings : Impact of Actions
Example : Reducing Time Spent in Idle Mode for Desktop
Goal: Reduce time in idle mode
Active = 29 % Active = 15 %
Idle = 45 % Idle =3%
Analysis: CPU not in sleep mode
Sleep = 26 % Sleep = 80 %
Off = 0% Off = 1.6 %
Intervention: Reset sleep mode
Energy Consumption (1 week): 8.9 kwh Energy Consumption (1 week): 2.5 kwh
Weekday Weekday Weekday Weekday Weekday
Weekend
Weekend
Weekend
Weekend
Weekend
Before Intervention After Intervention
Energy Savings of 71%
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26. CONTROLS : : Web-Based Actuation
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27. The Intelligent Workplace Dashboard: The C3 Dashboard
http://rayyun.net/test02/upload05/workloads/monitor3.php
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28. Summary
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29. Key-Points
• Interdisciplinary and user-based approach adopted to design C3
• Determined key-features for communication, consultancy and control
• Findings from this study are used to develop the live interface
• Initial prototype focus only on plug-loads
• Database prepared for appliances, their characteristics and user behavior w.r.t. plugloads
• Decision trees created to integrate database and generate logic based case-specific
recommendations
• Initial diagnosis and personal interventions have yielded positive results – Proving that the
3c approach works
Monitor + Diagnose + Recommend + Implement = Energy Savings
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30. Next-Steps
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31. Future Research
• Continue developing C3 and deploy prototype to study changes in user behavior and
energy savings on large scale
• Modify prototype based on user feedback and data analysis to establish credibility
• Continue research to include heating, cooling, lighting and ventilation categories
• Develop new technologies that speak to each other-making the dashboard easier to
deploy and economically viable
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32. Thank You
Special thanks to:
Bertrand Lasternas
Ray Yun
Maitri Shah
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