April 13, 2011
New web-enabled technologies coupled with powerful information visualization methods can provide valuable insight to building occupants, managers, and designers. These tools are being widely adopted in response to aggressive new energy goals, and a broadened interest in occupant engagement. At this event designers, software developers, researchers, and usability specialists presented various approaches for influencing behavior change, and provided a wide range of examples and case studies.
This event was sponsored by the Center for the Built Environment (CBE), at the University of California, Berkeley, and the PG&E Pacific Energy Center, with logistical support from th Golden Gate Chapter of ASHRAE. It was held on April 13, 2011, at the PG&E Pacific Energy Center.
Speakers and Presentations
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Kath Straub
Director, Usability.org
Presentation: Information, design, and the psychology of behavioral change
Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks, “I want to use more energy than my neighbor today.” But, inducing people to actually reduce their energy consumption still seems difficult. And the task becomes more complex in shared responsibility spaces, such as commercial buildings. In this talk we explore the psychology of behavioral change in the context of energy efficiency.
Kath Straub is the principal of Usability.Org, a consumer research and user-centered design organization with a focused interest in understanding human decision-making and design for behavioral change. As a behavioral psychologist, she and her colleagues work together to understand how the changing consumer communication ecosystem can be used to inform and influence the way we live, learn and make decisions. Her group is also actively involved in understanding why social games (e.g., Farmville) work, and how elements that make the games fun can be applied in serious contexts to evoke commitment and drive persistent behavioral change. Her current work is focused on adherence and compliance in the domains responsible energy use and health/wellness. She holds a PhD in Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
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Steve Bishop
Global Sustainability Lead, IDEO
Presentation: Designing for the smartest part of smart buildings — people
Design thinking and human-centered design can help enlist people as active contributors to sustainability goals. This session will feature case studies from the innovation and design firm IDEO that visualize information in the context of smart buildings, hybrid vehicles, financial services, and healthcare, and will include projects with the U.S. General Services Administration and Ford.
As Global Lead of sustainability at IDEO, Steve brings design thinking to the challenges and opportunities of sustainability. He helps companies build brands, generate new offerings, and shape innovation processes with positive environmental impact. His experience ranges across industries: He’s helped design award-winning office furniture, instrument panels for hybrid electric vehicles, product packaging, and medical injection devices (for which he holds patents). In 2007, Steve launched a course at Stanford University about sustainable design, and he’s developing a sustainable design program for the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, a.k.a. the d.school. He also teaches a course on design engineering at Stanford. Steve holds a bachelor’s degree in film and media from the University of Texas at Austin and a master’s degree in product design from Stanford.
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Barbara Ciesla
Vice President, HOK
Presentation: Empowering occupants for behavioral change
The actions of those who occupy and maintain a space have an enormous impact on our ability to reduce resource consumption. This session is a case study of the implementation of HOK’s Occupant Engagement Program (OEP) in an office complex with a population of 90 tenant companies and more than 20,000 people. The talk will explain how the OEP, which utilizes the principles of community based social marketing, can empower occupants and facilitate behavioral change.
Active in sustainable initiatives throughout her career, Barbara Ciesla leads HOK’s Sustainable Consulting practice in Canada. Barbara helps clients assess and manage their environmental impacts, and in turn provides solutions that support and add value to their business goals and performance. Her work includes providing strategic direction on sustainable practices and identifying green operating solutions, which is highlighted by Barbara’s leadership of the team that secured the first multi-tenant LEED® for Existing Buildings certification in Canada. Along with continuing to address the impacts of existing building stock, her current work is focused on the ongoing development and deployment of HOK’s Occupant Engagement Program™. A LEED Accredited Professional, Barbara received an Interior Design Diploma from Humber College in Toronto and is a Member of the Association of Registered Interior Designers of Ontario and the National Council for Interior Design Qualification.
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Saul Zambrano
Director, Integrated Demand-side Management Core Products, PG&E
Presentation: Data visualization technologies and customer insights
The advent of smart metering has created an explosion in the volume of energy data available to commercial customers. A key issue is effective data visualization — showing the right data, to the right users, at the right time. PG&E is performing technology assessments with customers to determine what frameworks and messages will drive action. This presentation will discuss PG&E’s experience with data visualization technologies, and insights gained from customer deployments.
Saul Zambrano is Director of Pacific PG&E’s Integrated Demand-side Management Core Products team. Saul’s team is responsible for developing new products within existing energy efficiency product categories such as lighting and appliances, electronics, HVAC, and energy management. In addition, Saul’s team is responsible for PG&E’s customer offerings in the emerging area of electric vehicles. Prior to joining PG&E, Mr. Zambrano was Director of the Global Finance Transformation Initiative for Carlson Wagonlit Travel and Director of WiMAX Solutions Commercial Marketing for Intel Corporation. Mr. Zambrano began his career as IT consultant and business development and finance professional with Nortel Networks, IBM Consulting, and JP Morgan. Mr. Zambrano received an MBA from Southern Methodist University and a BA in Economics from the University of Texas, El Paso.
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Michael Murray
Founder and CEO, Lucid Design Group
Presentation: Building occupant feedback systems and plug loads: opportunities and results
New findings on plug loads indicate that “unregulated” loads make up to 50 percent of a building’s total electricity use. Not all plug loads are controllable by occupants, but the portion that are represent a large and meaningful opportunity for conservation. This presentation discusses Lucid’s latest research on plug loads, as well as some of the latest success stories from behavioral campaigns.
Michael is Lucid’s CEO and co-founder. Lucid’s mission is to bring real-time environmental performance data to building occupants to engage, educate, motivate and empower resource conservation. Building Dashboard is recognized as one of the leading “dashboard” product, winning California’s Flex Your Power and Adobe’s MAX Award. Michael is a frequent speaker on metering and behavior-based conservation programs. His experience began at Oberlin College, installing meters and dataloggers as a student. After graduating from Oberlin in 2004, Michael served as project manager for Global Footprint Network, a nonprofit think-tank focused on the Ecological Footprint, a measure of ecosystem services and environmental impact. As an analyst, Michael expanded a comprehensive Ecological Footprint database for 150 countries. His work was widely published in reports such as WWF International’s “Living Planet Report.”
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Jessica Granderson
Research Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Presentation: Building energy information systems: Case study and state of the technology highlights
Building energy visualization and analysis tools are widely available in the commercial market, yet are underutilized, resulting in enormous missed savings opportunities. This presentation focuses on critical research addressing barriers to the widespread deployment of energy information systems (EIS); key findings include user case studies, a state of the technology evaluation, and analytical methods for building energy time series data analysis.
Dr. Jessica Granderson is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and is a member of the Commercial Buildings and Lighting research groups. Dr. Granderson holds an AB in Mechanical Engineering from Harvard University, and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley. She has a background in intelligent lighting controls, and whole-building energy performance monitoring and diagnostics.
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David Helliwell
Co-founder, Pulse Energy
Presentation: Checking the pulse of a large portfolio of buildings
What’s involved with rolling out an energy management system for hundreds of buildings at once? What do energy managers need to be heroes? Why don’t buildings work the way they’re supposed to? This presentation will discuss these and other challenges currently being faced by companies attempting to monitor and manage their energy consumption, using case studies and lessons learned.
David’s career has spanned 3 continents and has been focused on the energy sector since 1994. Before starting Pulse Energy in 2006, David was a professional windsurfer, an exploration geophysicist, a Paris-based management consultant to large multinational organizations and spent three years as the director of policy for a cabinet minister in the Canadian federal government. While with the Canadian government, David was responsible for reducing costs and improving environmental performance of 700 million square feet of office space across the country. David is a director of the Vancouver Board of Trade, an Action Canada Fellow, a member of the BC Cleantech CEO Alliance, and is on the Imagine BC advisory board.
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Paul Mathew
Staff Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Presentation: Presenting energy data to support action-oriented benchmarking
In this presentation we do a live demo of the EnergyIQ tool and discuss key considerations for visualizing energy data to support action-oriented benchmarking (AOB). AOB needs to allow navigation across different levels of engagement and detail — from relatively simple whole-building benchmarking to fairly detailed system-level benchmarking; from summary views of a portfolio of buildings to more fine-grained analysis for an individual building.
Paul Mathew is a Staff Scientist and Deputy Leader of the Commercial Building Systems group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), where he conducts applied research and market transformation activities on energy use in buildings. His current work is focused on energy efficiency and green design for laboratories and data centers, as well as energy benchmarking tools and techniques for commercial buildings. In addition to technical research and consulting, Paul also teaches courses on energy efficient design. Prior to joining LBNL, he worked at Enron Energy Services and the Center for Building Performance at Carnegie Mellon University. Paul has a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture, and a PhD in Building Performance and Diagnostics.