Breaking the Mold – Cobb Hill Cohousing is Leading the Charge

 Cobb Hill Cohousing and Rocky Mountain Environmental Services are developing an innovative energy monitoring system (EMS).  The EMS is being designed to provide information to meet several objectives including sub-metering, systems automation and a reduction in overall energy consumption.  These objectives will be accomplished with a real-time metering system that will provide various types of feedback to the residents so they can make informed choices in the way they consume energy.  Cobb Hill Cohousing purchases electricity at a commercial rate from two utility company metering points and because of the rate structure, the community’s control of peak-demand becomes an important tool to reduce their electricity bill.  The system will provide feedback to all residents about total current demand which will allow individuals to avoid adding demand during peak use periods.

 The space heating and domestic hot water needs are met with a central wood boiler that requires a means to determine consumption in each home for sub-billing. Feedback will be provided to enable community members to operate the system off the wood boiler without invoking the propane backup. There is a design goal of allowing community members to know the total community demand for electricity or BTUs before they decide to use energy.  The EMS will meter the consumption in each home, while providing each resident with the total community demand.  Phil Rice of Sustainability Institute and a Cobb Hill resident wants a system that will “…not only let us play the utility ‘rate game’ to reduce our electricity bills, but also empowers us to reduce our ecological footprint.”  

 The possibilities are endless, however, as with most innovative technologies there is a cost associated with breaking new ground. We want to distinguish between those innovations that are reasonably cost effective right now and those more expensive innovations that have not benefited from economies of scale. For implementation of the project we currently imagine a baseline data gathering mode across the whole community followed by providing a portion of the community with feedback as they attempt further reductions in their energy consumption. We want to understand how energy use feedback needs to be presented to be useful, meaningful and motivating to the end user.

 To discuss research opportunities contact

Phil Rice at: philrice@sustainer.org 

or

Jason Whitfield at jasonw@quantexdesign.com