The Vancouver Sun Article - Sept. 29, 2007

Looking to drop a carbon footprint shoe size?

While carbon calculators such as www.carbonfund.org and www.offsetters.ca seem to be growing like diet programs on the Web, there is nothing like real-time feedback to keep you honest and vigilant about your carbon-crunching efforts.

While Joe Van Bellinghem, co-developer of Victoria’s Dockside Green, jokes about his own growing waistline, he is a veritable Richard Simmons when it comes to motivating people to slim down their energy and water consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions.

Using an innovative monitoring and systems-control device called the MACH-Stat, the Dockside Green development will be the first in Canada to provide residents with in-suite — and online — access to minute-by-minute information about their personal energy and water consumption, and related carbon footprint.

IT SLICES, IT DICES, IT CALCULATES CARBON

While a programmable thermostat should be considered akin to a good sharp knife — every home should have one — the MACH-Stat system not only makes it easier for homeowners to create a comfortable indoor setting; it also helps them understand and implement a healthier water and energy diet for their home.

Such “smart meters” — interactive devices that control room temperature, and also track how much electricity people use and when they use it — are not new to Canada or B.C. In fact, BC Hydro’s 1.7 million customers can expect to see them installed in their homes within the next five years. However, according to Joe LeRoy, controls division manager for Houle Electric on Vancouver Island, the MACH-Stat type of metering, which also reports on the energy used for heating (space and water), water consumption, the weather outside, as well as each household’s carbon footprint, has never been done on a project of Dockside Green’s scale before.

Using a commercially available, out-of-box system made by Victoria-based Reliable Controls and customized for Dockside in collaboration with Houle Electric and Syscor Research and Development, residents will be able to track their energy and water use, and compare their consumption habits with their anonymous neighbors.

“What makes this system so powerful is that we place individual residents at the helm of their own energy monitoring and consumption control,” explains Robert Lashin, president of Houle Electric, on the company’s website.

“Programming and feedback tools have unprecedented power to bring about a measurable change in behaviour - and a meaningful change in attitudes - where responsible energy consumption is concerned.”

METERING SENSE

Energywatch, a gas and electricity watchdog in the U.K., describes smart metering, along with better consumer education, as the missing link in changing energy consumption and motivating consumers to actively conserve energy.

“There is better potential of changing people’s behaviour if it is right in front of them: in their face,” says LeRoy. “[UK development] BedZed has a comparable meter mounted right near the kitchen table. You can’t avoid it.”