I have been involved in submetering for energy performace on a few campuses. Sub-metering each floor is usually not expensive depending on how the buidling is wired.  You might check into this.  We have also put a computer screen up in a public space so people can see real time and general energy use on each floor.  The can really bring the competition up!

I am not aware of the specific tehchnologies involved.  Sorry about that.       

One critical thing here is to make sure you are comparing apples to apples. One floor might be heavy on lab spaces while another floor might have more passive spaces.  Different function have different energy loads.  So you can measure it by energy per average cooupant load if your floors are very different.  It would also be interesting to measure how the different areas of a building use energy.  I just looked at a "green buidling" that had a southwest facing attrium.  Seems very irresponsible and an energy HOG.  It would be great for occupants of this classroom building to see the amount of energy a space like this sucks up so they don't do it again!

Hope this helps a tad.  Sorry not more specific with product. 

Ron van der Veen

Hi Marian:

Perhaps I can be of assistance in regards to the technology piece.  I think the easiest way would be to use clamp-on current transducers, which are retrofit submeters that wrap around a conductor, at the subpanel level.   Another option would be to contact your utility and ask if they provide meters with a pulse output.  Generally speaking, a building will have a "main" that feeds electricity into the building.  From there it is fed into subpanels that split the power to different floors.  Once you have a meter/submeter that gives consumption output (kWh) you will need a dedicated data logger to secure the meter information and make it available over the LAN or you can try to leverage an existing building automation system if you have one in place.  And finally, you will need an interface to view and report the data.  It can be something as simple as an Excel graph or something as dynamic as a software dash board.

We have partnered with several progressive schools to provide the technology necessary for this granular data so feel free to ask any and all questions.  Other interesting competitions we have worked on are dorm vs. dorm and department competitions.  Regardless of who is competing they are great for increasing awareness and getting people involved.

Regards,

Cole Knappen

Obvius

www.obvius.com

My college's IT Dept. is interested in obtaining energy usage data to evaluate changes in servers and visualization. However, like many, there is only a building meter. So sub-metering would seem like the way to go--has anyone out there looked at IT energy usage and done any cost-benefit analysis of changes to lower usage. Also, I see the company above, Obvious, has some sub-metering capability--has anyone worked with Information Security Networks. They have promoted their sub-metering plan to our IT Dept.

Most Building Automation Systems (BAS) have electric metering that is designed to tie directly into the system. Devices such as the Siemens DEM units, are easily installed and are reasonably priced. Other BAS manufacturers probably have their own similar devices.