rgardner / extreme-design Goto Github PK

https://try.github.io/

Create org account for Nikola.

need to be able to

• see realtime information
  • relay status
  • current temperature / light / humidity / pressure
• reorder optimization preferences

My thoughts after talking with parents and friends:

Is the energy information actually actionable?

I don't think that people will move their power consumption to off peak hours. Will scientists be able to move their computations to the middle of the night? Will cafeterias be able to move their power consumption to outside of business hours (peak / super-peak)? For both of those use cases, I don't think that people can/will move their energy usage to off-peak hours. People won't change their eating schedules to off-peak hours; scientists won't move their computations to off-peak hours, that's not when they work.

Environmental Information IS actionable

Knowing the temperatures of different rooms is helpful. Building management can diagnose infrastructural problems, cough 715 Broadway, Stern cough. Knowing that the average temperature of the CS department is 65 degrees during the summer is very actionable. Buildings can disable setting the temperature below 72 or they can look at improving circulation to reduce high humidity.

I'm not saying we abandon the energy information, but we need to rethink what people can do with this information. Neurio uses this information for automation, but they have access to the electrical signature of the entire house, not just a handful of appliances. I think we need to look to them for how to reduce wasteful energy usage, like turning off the lights when no one is in the room, turning off the a/c when people are out to lunch, and alerting building management to abnormal energy usage.