Student Campus Energy Project Fund
The MIT Energy Initiative has established a grant program for student energy projects that promote campus sustainable energy and environmental practices and advance the broad objectives of the Campus Energy Task Force. Twice annually a committee of faculty, staff and students review student project proposals for seed funding and score them on merits of impact, community engagement, educational opportunity, and cost effectiveness. New proposals are always welcome. Complete details are available in the request for proposal.
Recent MITEI student campus energy project awards include:
Building Retrofits Strategies:
A new building retrofit working group at MIT has formed to tackle the issues of retrofitting buildings, both on campus and in general, focusing on identifying strategies to make them more energy efficient and minimizing negative impacts on the environment. To achieve this mission, the group has proposed a project with several phases. The phases include identifying locations for possible retrofits on campus, identifying groups and organizations interested in retrofit technologies, analyzing data collected by current tracking technology and ultimately connecting these locations with the new technologies to be used for experimental purposes in campus buildings. Research discoveries will be reported by the group to the MIT Energy Initiative and Department of Facilities. See http://sustainability.mit.edu/Energy_Retrofits for more details.
MIT Generator:
The goal of the MIT Generator is to run a series of events that help catalyse and support student projects with a focus on energy, environment, and sustainability issues on MIT's campus. Events for Spring 2008 included a forum in which students proposed project ideas and recruited attendees to discuss and mobilize on these ideas with a focus on energy, environment, and sustainability issues on MIT's campus. An exposition of outcomes from these projects was held in April 2008 to celebrate, publicize and catalogue these successes in one central place for promotional and publicity purposes. Stay tuned at http://sustainability.mit.edu/Generator for details on location and time for the next Re-Generator event.
Behavior Change Campaign — Closing the Loop:
The "Closing the Loop" working group proposed three major projects during their fall semester 2007 discussions: the "Turn Out the Lights" campaign, working with IS&T on the computer power management campaign and strengthening the communication regarding Athena paper conservation. "Turn Out the Lights" is a reprise of earlier campaigns to put stickers on light switches to inform users that it is OK to turn them off. The computer power management campaign will have two thrusts — a widespread distribution of IS&T personal computer power management guidelines and a campaign to promote turning off Athena cluster monitors. Finally, an expansion of the information signs about printer usage in all clusters will be performed based on the positive feedback received from the pilot program started last spring. Find out more at http://sustainability.mit.edu/Closing_the_Loop.
Dorm Electricity Competition:
The second annual MIT undergraduate dorm electricity competition continued to raise awareness of personal energy consumption on campus within each person's living space while making energy more of a topic of interest among the undergraduate students living on campus. The 2008 competition, which ran from March 7th to May 1st, aimed to be more competitive and representative of the energy used per student on a weekly basis. Ideally, the impact of the competition will encourage small scale changes in behavior on an individual basis, while the impact will be seen in the greater community through outreach and events. The dorm which reduced its electricity use the most per student from the baseline week received $10,000 in energy efficient retrofits. The full 2008 results are at http://energymap.mit.edu/dorm.
Revolving Door Behavioral Change Campaign:
Revolving doors prevent the free exchange of conditioned indoor air with outdoor air. They are therefore a much more energy efficient way of entering and exiting a building than using swing doors. The energy savings are quite substantial, but door signage is important for more than just energy savings. Building on recent student research that demonstrated the effectiveness of signage in encouraging revolving door use, this project is designing and printing signage and developing an awareness campaign to encourage revolving door use on campus. The project will be adding specially designed signs to buildings with revolving doors, such as E25, 46, 66 and E51 to encourage the use of these energy efficient doors. More details about the project can be found at http://sustainability.mit.edu/Revolving_Door.
Revolving Door Behavioral Change — Part 2:
Another pilot research project proposes to install devices on the manual swing doors which would cause them to make annoying noises when used. A temporary buzzer will be installed on the standard door near a revolving door in various locations. The students involved will then quantitatively assess whether the noise influenced people to choose the revolving door rather than the manual door. Future refinements could include the use of a timer so that it doesn't buzz when the revolving doors are locked and it could be designed to avoid buzzing when the automatic door opening mechanism for disabled people is activated. In the best case scenario, such a device might yield long term behavioral changes, encouraging the use of energy efficient devices while reducing the Institute's environmental footprint. For more information, contact Sanjay Magavi, smagavi@mit.edu.
Thermoelectric Devices for Waste Heat Recovery:
In an attempt to take a technology developed in MIT's labs and test it in a real application, this group of students working in Professor Gang Chen's and Professor Gene Fitzgerald's labs is collaborating with the Department of Facilities and to identify possible locations and requirements for installing the thermoelectric technology in MIT's co-generation power plant. The group plans to build a prototype device based on research results developed at MIT for field testing and gather results from the testing to compare the performance with conventional thermoelectric devices currently available in the market. The final phase of the project will test the compatibility of thermoelectric devices with the co-generation system and complete a cost/return analysis for implementation of this technology at MIT and in similar industrial settings. If the technology proves viable, it has the potential over time to reduce the total fuel consumption of the co-gen power plant by approximately 5% while delivering the same amount of power to campus. In doing so, it also has the potential to benefit the broader MIT community by increasing the awareness of energy related research on campus while taking MIT one step closer to real world energy saving applications. For more information, contact Albert Bai, ybai@mit.edu.
Behavioral Modeling Sandbox:
The students working on this project propose utilizing the AnyLogic development platform to develop a proof-of-concept modeling tool for helping Facilities and the Administration explore the mobility response of the MIT pedestrian community to infrastructural change for sustainability, and energy efficiency in particular. In testing the platform in areas, such as E62, data will potentially indicate to the Department of Facilities where information kiosks would be best placed for pedestrian utilization. Ideally, placing the tool online would help build community awareness of the possibilities for changing pedestrian behavior to save energy, through the careful design and placement of external and internal building structures. An initial simulation is at http://web.mit.edu/bkock/www/SustainabilitySandboxApplet_011008_v2/SustainabilitySandbox.html.
MIT Sustainability Pledge Effort:
The MIT Pledge Effort has already hosted several events focusing on socio-environmental practices in the working world as well as at MIT. The Pledge aims to have 30 students take the Pledge this year and has begun connecting Pledge-taking students with career knowledge, student leadership opportunities, MIT alumni and alumnae and each other through informal discussion groups. The Effort will then document its progress and produce a public report for MIT and the Graduation Pledge Alliance. Check out http://sustainability.mit.edu/Pledge for details and information on the Effort as well as upcoming events.
Solar Thermal Dish Concentrator for Efficient Energy Generation:
This project team, comprised of undergraduate and graduate students from multiple schools and disciplines, proposed to build a prototype of a solar dish concentrator that can be constructed from inexpensive, commonly available materials to demonstrate that renewable energy is affordable and accessible to everyone. The main goal of the prototype is to examine the reliability, durability and efficiency of the affordable solar dish concentrator and to evaluate the viability of using it to generate solar energy for MIT. The project aims to introduce the Institute to the possibility of using both solar thermal energy and solar PV panels to generate energy in an affordable way while reducing the Institute's environmental footprint. For more information visit http://web.mit.edu/mitei/education/spotlights/solar-dish.html.
Energy, Environment and Sustainability Alumni Initiative:
This initiative aims to engage MIT alumni around sustainability, energy, and environmental issues and open the door for funding and collaboration on projects that will reduce the campus' eco-footprint. This will be done by first establishing a coordinating committee from student clubs, faculty, the alumni association, and other related groups, then developing content for a Guide to Sustainability, Energy, and Environmental activities on campus for alumni. The Initiative will implement the Guide online, linking to relevant MIT portals and publicizing events involving sustainability, energy, and environmental issues directly to MIT alumni. For more information, contact Chris Evans, cevans@mit.edu.
Faculty and Staff Sustainable Campus Commitment Postcard:
This project hopes to use the influence of MIT faculty and staff to affect campus energy usage and its environmental footprint. It will design, print, and distribute a postcard to faculty and staff, which can be displayed on their office doors to show commitment to a more sustainable campus. Ideally, this will help facilitate communication and collaboration between diverse members of the MIT community by helping them recognize each other's interest in sustainability, thereby increasing visibility and support for the campus environmental and sustainability movement and creating an environment in which sustainability projects could be easily founded and collaborated upon. A website with actions faculty and staff can take to advance campus sustainability in their day-to-day work will support the post card campaign. For more information, visit http://sustainability.mit.edu/Campus.
Student Action Coalition:
This project aims to integrate campus activities and align student activities with common objectives in sustainability to have the biggest impact on MIT and the world. From the initial proposal, it will develop into a much broader coalition of students. In the first step, a baseline scenario will be created through a sector specific student audit across the Institute on the basis of energy and resource utilization. Then, the coalition will provide assistance to MIT student groups in creating impact reports to assess and increase the impact of their sustainability projects. It will provide a cost benefit analysis and path to implementation, as well as suggestions for how the same project might be applied on a larger scale off-campus. For more information, contact Jeff McAulay, jmc3@mit.edu.
Web-Based Energy Metering in MIT Dorms:
Last year, the lead organizers of the MIT Dorm Electricity Competition collected data manually by reading the electricity meters at each dorm every week. The team behind this project believes that a better feedback system for energy consumption will result in students conserving a significantly higher amount of energy during the competition and throughout the year. To accomplish this, this project aims to install new wireless or Ethernet enabled electricity meters in all MIT dormitories to create an online database that will build an accurate, historical record of dorm electricity usage across campus. It also plans to develop an interactive web interface that will display real-time electricity consumption data as well as competitive rankings of the dorms. Through testing strategies of data presentation to students, the project seeks to improve the understanding of the relationship between feedback on consumption and conservational behavior change. For more information, contact Brian Urban, burban@mit.edu.
Wind Turbine Design Competition:
The Wind Turbine Design Competition was designed to give students the opportunity to design and build a wind turbine. Participants will be given the materials and instruction necessary to construct their wind turbines. The competition is intended for students interested in helping the environment, gaining experience developing clean energy solutions, as well as those interested in design challenges. The final showcase will be an engineering competition and will also introduce the participants to the concepts of sustainability and possible solutions. This project has not yet been implemented.
Energy Mapping Project:
Energy usage in buildings accounts for more than one third of the world's consumption, yet most buildings are used without feedback of energy use to the occupants and operators. Accurate energy use data allows for more effective maintenance and efficiency improvements, as well as feedback to building users about their actions. This project compiles energy usage data into a website with database back-end, and uses existing visualization tools to display and analyze the data. A prototype map of campus displaying energy use intensity with a color scale are posted on the website, which is intended to be a tool for students, staff, and faculty to assess MIT's energy usage and determine economically appropriate improvement projects. The map is currently under development at http://energymap.mit.edu/map (requires Firefox).
Undergraduate Association (UA) Campus Energy and Environment Pamphlet:
The UA Campus Sustainability Committee (UACSC), in an effort to serve the MIT student sustainability community, has published a booklet for distribution during Orientation 2007 that contains information about many of the student groups, clubs, and initiatives involved with energy, the environment, and sustainability on campus. The booklet targets incoming freshmen for recruitment purposes, but can also be a valuable tool for recruiting new and existing MIT undergraduate and graduate students, improving communication and organization within the sustainability community, interfacing with MIT alumni and companies, and presenting a unified face to the MIT administration. Any questions or comments should be directed to the UA via http://web.mit.edu/ua/www/about/contact.html.
Campus Climate Awareness Project - Focus the Nation:
"Focus the Nation" is a national campaign intended to "focus the growing concern in the country about global warming, and to create a serious, sustained and truly national discussion about clean energy solutions, linking students and citizens directly with our political leaders." This MIT campus contribution - Focus on Climate Change - strives to create a wider awareness and conversation about climate change on campus and to motivate and empower students to take action on these issues; it also strives to draw people from varied backgrounds and ultimately each MIT department to become involved with the MIT Energy Initiative. A goal of this project is to get every MIT department to host a panel of speakers and/or other activities that will discuss the relationship of their work with possible climate change solutions. These Focus on Climate Change seminars at MIT took place during the second week of February 2008. For more information, contact Kendra Johnson, kendraj@mit.edu.
Appliance Use Energy Audits and Case Studies:
Presently, the Department of Facilities meters all buildings for electricity, gas and water consumption at the whole-building scale, with many of its buildings metered for steam and chilled water consumption as well. However, information on the end-use consumption below the building level, such as at the appliance level, would be very helpful in order to influence behavioral changes in users. Measuring these parameters for various appliances within buildings would provide interesting information that could be used to educate building occupants about their energy behaviors and to motivate change. By conducting plug load case studies for a few typical appliances on campus, the power consumption and schedule of use will be measured and analyzed. Plug-in items to be tested include Athena cluster computers, a selection of lab equipment, an office printer and copier in a departmental office, and other appliances to be determined. Results of the project will include a paper on the measured use schedules for the appliances studied, posters with the results of each study posted next to similar appliances on campus, and a plug-load meter, which could reside with MIT Facilities, for use on other student projects. For details, see http://sustainability.mit.edu/Energy_Use_Identification.
Biodiesel@MIT:
Biodiesel@MIT is a student-led group that is working to produce biodiesel fuel at MIT from used vegetable oil produced in campus food services operations. The fuel is to be used in MIT 's diesel-powered vehicles as a blend with petroleum-based diesel fuel to save money and use a renewable fuel. The group is also developing educational materials and research opportunities and seeks to be an information resource on biofuels. Formed in fall of 2006, Biodiesel@MIT aims to implement the new system in the fall of 2008. The group includes students and administrators, and welcomes any MIT community members interested in the project. Its website is located at http://web.mit.edu/mit_energy/programs/campusenergy/biodiesel/
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