People’s behavior is a critical factor in a building’s energy use and can often account for significant changes in the amount of energy consumed. Plug and process loads alone account for 33% of an office building’s energy consumption and is projected to increase 49% by 2030¹. As our daily work and lives continue to use more energy consuming devices, building occupants and building systems need to operate together to improve energy efficiency.

Occupant Behavior on Submetering System Benefits

Leading practices show that increasing occupant awareness of usage, coupled with an effective conservation campaign can reduce resource consumption and improve occupant engagement. Providing building occupants with knowledge of their energy use, as well as easy and helpful tips for helping them reduce their consumption could provide significant reductions in a building’s overall energy use. Quick tips and easy to make changes such as turning off computers and other ancillary devices at the end of the day can account for real energy savings.

Submeters can collect occupant energy use and provide individuals with data that can be used help monitor behavior in a transparent way. Energy display dashboards, monthly reports and fliers, emails, and web-based portals, are methods that can be used to provide building occupants with access to their individual energy use. The example energy dashboards pictured below provide users with a summary of their energy trends and overall use. Dashboards can be used by individuals to help identify ways to reduce consumption by visualizing the near real-time effects of energy behavior changes.

Sample dashboards from the GSA Carbon Footprint Tool.

By delivering real-time energy information in a convenient way, users can learn to act more efficiently by making easy and important changes to their everyday behavior. Consequently, occupant behavior changes can lead to larger-scale building conservation outcomes and results.

Find more about plug loads and management strategies here.

Submeters offer an exciting look into a building's energy consumption. While submetering systems by themselves have no direct impact on resource use, the data they capture:

• informs real-time energy and resource use performance,
• can pinpoint performance variations over time relative to other buildings,
• feed into building automation systems that drive continuous operational improvements, and
• provide the information needed to encourage behavioral and operational changes by building operators and occupants.

A submeter system's impact can vary greatly depending upon the type of program that is installed. Consider the types of benefits that are being sought within a building in order to make an informed selection for the system that should be metered. The variety of indirect benefits that submeters can provide to human health, safety, and efficiency makes them an extremely impactful technology within a building. System benefits to humans include:

• Indoor environmental quality
• Reduced air emissions
• Resource use available to occupants
• Tenant level metering