Sutardja Dai Hall, CITRIS headquarters at UC Berkeley, has been outfitted as a demand-response technology testbed. The goal: to develop intelligent control of its electricity load, and reduce peak demand by at least 30%.
Starting with the building’s modern energy-management system, the project’s strategy is to mine increasingly granular data via extensive sub-meters in the building, monitoring everything from central lighting and HVAC to distributed energy use at every outlet. An energy “gateway” will make offices smart, gathering that data, communicating with individual occupants, and negotiating with building controls for the best response to the user’s demand.
The project aims to move us from manual control of energy usage — each occupant’s flip of a switch or crank of a thermostat — to fully automated response and control, based on better and better data.
