The prefix ‘smart’ gets thrown in front of so many things the phrase has lost some of its meaning. We tend to think of ‘smart’ technology mostly as something done by computers and designers. That’s not the whole story. We also need smart – and adaptive users. Only by creating both, can we achieve energy sustainability.
The thought of curbing energy use can scare some people. They might imagine sitting in a cold dark home, where convenience is governed by government mandate quotas. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, many of the best energy saving technology actually make our lives more convenient and cheaper.
Gord Hicks is the CEO of Brookfield Global Integrated Solutions (BGIS), a provider of customized facility management services, energy and sustainability solutions, real estate services and more. He’s a driving force in making buildings more energy efficient in Ontario and across Canada.
Recently, Hicks worked with a specialty retailer in Ontario who installed cost-effective ECO Bee thermostats controlling high efficiency Trane HVAC roof top units. They also switched to LED lighting. All of this is measured and controlled using a Circuit Meter monitoring system which enables cost effective measurement and real-time reporting. The result is over 60 per cent reduction in energy consumption. The shift led to a 40 per cent increase in lighting output, and significant cost savings.
“Our industry needs to act as the translators and integrators of smart building technology solutions into the built environment,” says Hicks. “We can educate the owners on the full lifecycle benefit of investing in smart technologies in the development phase, increasing energy efficiency and extending the life of the assets, while eliminating carbon emissions and enhancing the brand of the organization.”
Bronwyn Lazowski, a researcher in the Faculty of Environment, studies why people do, and don’t use widely available technological innovation to improve their energy use. In her recent paper, Towards a smart and sustainable residential energy culture: assessing participant feedback from a long-term smart grid pilot project. She identified that each household had different motivations for managing their energy use.
“Maintaining home comfort, saving money, and/or protecting the environment by effectively managing energy consumption can be large motivations for home energy management through technologies,” she says.
You may have seen the car commercial where a couple lands at a snowy airport following a sunny vacation. As the airplane taxis, they remotely start the heating in their car (sitting snow-covered in a parking lot) from their phones. Now imagine warming your home the same way after a long vacation. It’s convenient, and offers a tool for families to save money by not heating their home while they are away.
Lazowski is just as interested in finding out what prevents people from adopting and using smart energy technology. Households comprise a bundle of values, awareness levels, and levels of activities, which can vary substantially between households. Some studies have identified a range of upwards to 200 per cent in consumption differences between households with similar socio-technical profiles and technological efficiencies, highlighting the importance of ‘behavioral wedges’ in transforming energy demand.
For instance, whether it’s desired temperature, schedules, or delegation of responsibilities, every family has a complex arrangement of energy needs. How many times have you reminded or have heard children be asked to turn off lights in an empty room? Even the most cohesive families will encounter difficulties aligning preferred energy use and adopting new more sustainable habits. She also discovered that time is a big factor. People are busy, and for most families energy management ‘fell to the backburner’ for households.
Convenience was also a major factor in maximizing the potential of smart grid technologies. The concept of ‘load-shifting’ holds a lot of potential, but is one of the trickiest to get people to buy into. Load-shifting is doing your best to use off-peak energy. In Ontario, this is from 7pm – 7am during weekdays and all-day on weekends and holidays. For instance, running your dishwasher, or dryer during these periods eases pressure on the energy grid. Technology exists to determine when energy is off-peak and run appliances automatically, but most people do not have it. And, sometimes remembering the most optimal time to run appliances may fall to the backburner of our already busy schedules. But perhaps, if we have the personal motivating factors, we would adapt our behavior.
This is why having environmentally conscious allies who aim to transform residential energy use and the property development and management industry is so critical.
“Many of our clients are driven to continuously reduce their operating costs, while looking for ways to reduce their environmental footprints,” says Hicks. “Having access to business cases from technology companies that showcase how solutions have been implemented and proven these objectives helps facilitate the implementation of these solutions and really accelerates their adoption.”
