HUNTSVILLE — Electricity consumption at Huntsville’s greenest building could soon be monitored using state-of-the-art software.
The creator of a company called Zerofootprint, which uses software to wirelessly measure utility consumption, could be doing a demonstration at the University of Waterloo environmental facility, according to Huntsville mayor Claude Doughty.
Doughty says he hopes the technology could eventually be built into the facility.
“It’s very interesting technology,” he told council this month. “It would fit in very well in the building.”
In the mostly federally funded University of Waterloo environment facility, $1.8 million is being spent on green technologies.
The facility, which will first be used during the G8 Summit and then leased to the university, boasts geothermal heating, a “living wall” full of live vegetation, water and energy-conserving fixtures, and more.
The Zerofootprint software works by hooking up monitoring devices in the building using specially built plugs called “talking plugs,” which cost about $75 each to build, said Ron Dembo, the chief executive officer of Zerofootprint, who sits on Waterloo’s environmental studies board.
That information flows wirelessly to a router, which publishes it to the Internet, allowing you to view energy consumption online.
“We would show in real time what the energy draw is in the (Waterloo) centre,” said Dembo, adding the plan is to display the information on a big-screen television in the Huntsville facility’s lobby. The software would provide benchmarks for future building in Huntsville. “The idea is to make energy and carbon visible.”
Of course, said Doughty, there’s no money in the town’s budget to purchase the product. The town is borrowing $8.37 million to pay for its portion of $40 million worth of capital projects.
If it proceeds, sponsors or grants would be a likely source for funding, said Doughty.