Students power down to save energy

With the incentive of a cash prize, students will race to lower the thermostats and turn off the…With the incentive of a cash prize, students will race to lower the thermostats and turn off the lights in their residence halls.

The Panther Power Down Showdown is a competition between certain residence halls to see which hall can reduce its energy use the most for the month of October. The event, spearheaded by the Oakland Green Team of Engineers for a Sustainable World, will officially begin Oct. 1 and end Oct. 29.

In the past, ESW has completed projects that have led to plastic bag reduction at the campus convenience stores and more water bottle refill stations around campus.

Jon Bechtel, the project’s leader, said the Panther Power Down Showdown is the group’s first project that will rely solely on student participation.

In order to prepare for the competition, baseline electricity readings will be taken during the last couple weeks of September.

ESW President Bruk Berhanu said facilties management will collect electricity usage data from each residence hall for the duration of the competition.

“The Green Team will then process the raw data and turn it into per-capita reduction,” he said.

Bechtel said the standings will then be accessible to students in a variety of ways, including online in the my.pitt portal and in signs posted in residence hall lobbies. Bechtel said that he hopes these standings will encourage students to reduce their energy use.

The winning dorm, which will receive a cash prize, will be determined by an overall decrease in energy use per student over the month of October.

Residence halls in the running for the prize include Panther Hall, Pennsylvania Hall, Lothrop, Sutherland, the Quad (as one unit) and Litchfield Towers (also as one unit).

Other residence halls, such as Forbes Hall, are not eligible to compete this year due to a difficulty in measuring energy levels separate from the businesses attached to the halls.

The cash prize is awarded depending on the size of the residence halls: $500 for Panther Hall and Pennsylvania Hall, $750 for Sutherland or Lothrop, and $1,000 for Towers or the Quad.

The Pitt Green Fund, an initiative established through the Student Government Board to sponsor student proposals, is funding the project, while Jim Earle, director of Housing and Food Services, is funding the incentive money.

Bechtel said the cash can be used by the resident assistants or resident directors toward an exclusive event.

“I get the impression that RAs don’t get a lot of money to put on floor events,” Betchtel said. “So they would appreciate this money.”

Wasi Mohamed, executive board president of the Resident Student Association, said the idea of prize money will be a great incentive for resident assistants.

“Students often request ideas for bigger, cool projects, but they are difficult to pull off with the [resident assistant’s] budget,” Mohamed said.

Although some elements of energy use are controlled by the residence halls, project leaders ensure that efforts will be made to take these obstacles into account.

“The data we collect will be categorized based on rooms and outlets so that we can tell whether a utilities closet is using the energy or a student,” Berhanu said.

Berhanu said he predicts there will be reductions in energy use, but it is difficult to say by how much.

“It’s hard to predict. Days will be getting shorter, so more energy will be used,” he said. “I believe there will be a reduction as long as the effort is properly advertised and students realize how easy it is to reduce their energies.”

Bechtel said the best way to reduce electricity use is to spend time in places other than the residence halls.

“Use up places that are already consuming energy, like your favorite coffee shop,” he said.

Bechtel also offered some advice for conserving energy use within the residence halls, including light management and cold and heat conservation.

“Be aware of how you use washers and dryers. If you use a dryer directly after someone else, you can conserve heat and save energy there,” he said.

Some other suggestions included turning off appliances when not in use, using a power strip and avoiding decorative lighting.

Bechtel said that Pitt has already made some efforts to reduce energy use, such as installing automatic lights in the classrooms.

However, Bechtel said there is plenty of room for improvement.

“We could be doing a lot more. We’ve looked into optimizing elevator systems in the Cathedral and optimizing shuttle routes,” he said.

While this is the first year of the Panther Power Down Showdown, Bechtel said he has hopes for how the project can improve in the future. One of these improvements includes transferring the project from the hands of ESW to the University.

“The club serves as a middleman,” he said. “If it happened from above, it could be implemented really well.”

Bechtel also said that if Pitt sponsored the project, there would be more funding to allow for more specific and accurate energy level readings.

“There is software that gives you real-time energy usage. If the University could implement it, we could have individual buildings competing against each other, and it could become much more intimate,” he said.

Such software would also highlight areas in which Pitt needs to ensure greater energy efficiency.

For this year, ESW’s goal is to teach students techniques for a more sustainable lifestyle.

“With 20,000 undergrads, and a large amount that live on campus, any small reduction across a few thousand students will generate some kind of change,” Berhanu said.

Editor’s note: Jon Bechtel is an employee of The Pitt News.