Oakland, Prince Frederick halls get tracker for water, electricity use

Residents of Oakland and Prince Frederick halls will be able to track their water and electricity use in real time with the launch of an online dashboard pilot program.

The program, a collaborative effort between the Department of Resident Life, Facilities Management and the design group Lucid Technologies, will begin Monday.

The dashboards are now available online for both Oakland and Prince Frederick. The portals allow anyone to see real-time data for electricity and water use by the hour, day, week, month or year.

Prince Frederick used 61,972 gallons of water last week, while Oakland used 195,468 gallons of water, according to the dashboards. The dashboards also allow users to convert units into other meaningful measurements, such as bottles of water or pounds of carbon dioxide generated for electricity.

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Individual room and hall consumption aren’t available because of limitations of the technology, but also because South Campus Associate Director Dennis Passarella-George, who oversaw the project, said it might cause students to lose sight of the purpose. For example, students might start to shower on another floor to use less water on their own floors.

Physical dashboards in the lobbies of the dorms will also be used to raise student awareness, Passarella-George said.

Sept. 12 marked the beginning of a three-week sustainability challenge for the two dorms, although they are not competing against each other, Passarella-George said. The differences in infrastructure and number of residents in the two buildings make comparisons between them difficult.

“Some other schools will do these competitions between buildings,” Passarella-George said. “We didn’t want to do that because really the goal here is to see, as a collective in your building: How much can you do to try to reduce overall?”

However, that doesn’t mean some students wouldn’t want competition. Prince Frederick resident and freshman engineering major Amitai Cohen said students would be a lot more invested if it Oakland and Prince Frederick competed.

For Prince Frederick resident Eliana Kahan, the dashboards could be useful, but she said she won’t go out of her way to change her habits or learn more.

“I guess it is a good idea because I’m not going to think about how much electricity I’m using unless someone shows me the amount,” the sophomore community health major said. “I don’t know how much it’s actually going to help, because we are all so busy. I don’t know if electricity is what’s on my mind right now.”

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“I think it’s much more long-term and has to be a lot more integrated to have a sizable impact,” Cohen said.

Sparking student interest continues to be a challenge for Resident Life, Passarella-George said.

“What we have is almost 12,000 students living with us,” Passarella-George said. “Where we can help with education and behavior change, it could make a huge difference across campus. If you’re well-informed and start thinking about these issues in your residence halls, then do you think twice when you’re in Stamp and you’re trying to decide to take the time to sort and compost?”

The challenge also made a point of not setting any specific reduction goals, as Resident Life isn’t sure yet what numbers would be reasonable to achieve, Passarella-George said, noting the group wants to make individuals generally more aware of reducing their own consumption.

“Between the dashboards and the activities we have planned,” Passarella-George said, “I hope it causes people to think just a little bit and maybe change their behavior.”