Energy challenge: Dorms compete to conserve energy

For the next month, students will be ridding themselves of cabin fever, gearing up for Little 500 and setting their sights on the end of finals.\nBut Kelly Breeze and David Roedl are asking students living in campus dormitories to think about two more things: energy and electricity.\nFrom now until April 17, 10 residence halls will be competing in IU’s first annual Energy Challenge. About 10,000 students living in Ashton, Briscoe, Eigenmann, Forest, Foster, McNutt, Read, Teter, Willkie and Wright will be competing with each other to achieve the greatest percentage of reduction in water and energy use, according to the IU Energy Challenge 2008 Web site.\nAt the end of the month, the dormitory that shows the highest percentage of energy reduction will win a $500 end-of-the-year cookout and the satisfaction of making their daily routine a bit better for the environment.\nRoedl, a graduate student in the School of Informatics, and Breeze, director of Environmental Affairs for the IU Residence Halls Association, helped create the competition and they hope it will encourage students to make some personal sacrifices for a bigger cause.\n“We’re trying to get not so much as an amount of usage but a percent reduction,” said David Fuente, an instructor at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs. “We’re leaving it open-ended in terms of laying out a challenge for the students to compete against each other to get the greatest percent reduction in electricity and water use.”\nRoedl designed the competition from the technical side as his master’s project for the Interaction Design Program in the School of Informatics. Roedl created a simple interface, or Web page, where students can go to see their dorms’ ranking in the competition.\n“For me, the research goal is to think about energy as a thing that most of us take for granted,” Roedl said. “The concept is based around using digital tools to visualize energy. We’re taking it from this thing that’s sort of taken for granted and invisible and making it visible and a part of your environment. So you can reflect on that usage and what the consequences are.”\nThe Utility Information Group takes meter readings Thursdays and Mondays during the competition. Fuente said this will provide an academic week and weekend picture of energy and electricity usage so students can conceptualize their use.\nThough a first for IU, competitions such as this one aren’t a new idea. University of New Hampshire started a similar competition several years ago. The University estimated students cut their energy use by 27 percent and water by 35 percent, according to University of New Hampshire’s Energy Waste Watch Challenge Web site.\nReduction like that translates to real money. University of New Hampshire’s estimated cost avoidance, that is the money not spent on utilities because the usage was reduced, was $45,000. IU has nearly 25,000 more students than the University of New Hampshire, according to enrollment figures from both schools’ registrar offices.\nBecause of this, Breeze thinks IU’s cost avoidance could dwarf the University of New Hampshire’s. But she understands it may be difficult to affect change in students.\n“Part of me wants to knock on 9,000 doors,” Breeze said. “The first step is to inform people how to make changes. It’s important to take some step. If you don’t make any changes, then you are doing harm.”\nFor information about each dorm’s ranking or tips on how to cut down their energy and water usage, visit the Energy Challenge Web site http://energychallenge.indiana.edu