For Project ReCharge, we are utilizing exciting energy monitoring technology from LoadIQ, a Reno-based business. This partnership will allow the students participating in Project ReCharge to monitor their school’s energy data in real time!
LoadIQ is a remarkably innovative system for understanding electrical energy, and how it is used in buildings. The system allows people to see energy use, better understand energy sources and impacts, and to evaluate how we can use less energy. At the heart of the system is a sophisticated computer program and magic electronic box that together read signals at thousands of times per second coming from sensors that are placed in key locations in the electrical wiring of a building. The system allows us to look at energy from the whole-building scale down to very great detail – even down to how and how much a single piece of equipment (even a light bulb) uses energy.
The LoadIQ system allows people to look at everything in a building contributing to using energy – including lights, motors, pumps fans, office equipment and other items – as well as any energy-producing systems attached to a building, like photovoltaic systems (which produce electricity using solar power). The LoadIQ energy information is presented in different graphical interfaces, which means that different graphs like the image at the top of the page are generated for teaching understanding of how and why energy is used, as well as allowing us to “work with the numbers” to figure out what behavior changes or building modifications could lead to energy use being lowered.
That we can learn about and evaluate energy use and its impacts with the LoadIQ system leads the way to greater understanding of the increasingly important role energy has in our lives. The more we understand our energy use, the better our ability to responsibly and effectively live and work with it.
