Dominion Foundation grant will fund energy monitoring system

BY HOLLY RODRIGUEZ
Media and Public Relations Officer

The Dominion Foundation has awarded $100,000 to the University to purchase and install an energy monitoring system in all 14 campus residence halls.

Richmond will be the first college in Virginia to use the Campus Resource Monitoring System, a Web-based hardware and software system designed to encourage student energy conservation by showing how much energy is being used. A petition with 1,000 student signatures requesting increased sustainability efforts on campus supported the project.

“We knew our students were interested in sustainability, but had to figure out how to motivate them to conserve electrical energy,” said Steve Nash, associate professor of journalism. “The problem is that you can’t easily see how much electricity you’re using, so you’re not aware of when you’re wasting it. This system makes it highly visible, and presents the data in an engaging way.”

“This contribution will help the University tap the ingenuity of its students and harness their commitment to using energy wisely to help reduce costs across the campus,” said William C. Hall Jr., R’75, Dominion’s vice president-corporate communications and president of the Dominion Foundation. “This program fits well with Dominion’s aggressive energy conservation initiatives.”

“The University also will use this as a diagnostic tool to verify how much energy we are saving,” said George Souleret, campus engineer.

Created by Lucid Design Inc., the system will display students’ per capita and dorm-by-dorm energy use on an “energy dashboard,” projected on three large screens in public areas on campus. The data is presented using bar charts showing how much money is spent and pollution generated when electricity is wasted.

The system is scheduled to be installed by fall 2009, when dorm residents will compete for the highest decrease in energy use. At Oberlin College, students were able to reduce their electricity use by up to 55 percent over two weeks using the same system.

The Dominion Foundation will award approximately $20 million to more than 1,100 nonprofit organizations in 26 states and D.C. this year, primarily in states where Dominion operates power stations, natural gas and other energy facilities.

Dominion is one of the nation’s largest producers of energy, with a portfolio of approximately 26,500 megawatts of generation. The company serves retail customers in 11 states.  For more information, visit the company’s Web site at www.dom.com.