Monash Energy Challenge - Off Peak Power

Parkville reduced its off-peak electricity consumption by 42% in July’s Monash Energy Challenge – Off Peak Power to take top campus honours in the university-wide competition to reduce after-hours electricity consumption compared to July 2007.

Parkville’s off-peak electricity reduction was more than double that of its nearest campus competitor, Berwick, and five times larger than the entire university’s eight percent reduction.

The Monash Energy Challenge – Off Peak Power was an initiative to reduce the amount of electricity consumed in the off-peak electricity period from 11pm to 7am weekdays and on the weekend.

All of Monash University’s Victorian campuses participated successfully in the challenge, and over 550 staff and students registered their commitment to the challenge. The results of the Energy Challenge are shown in the table below.  According to the Director of the Office of Environmental Sustainability, Paul Barton, the off-peak power challenge showed how easy it is to reduce the university’s environmental impact when many people take a lot of small actions.

“The off-peak electricity reduction came about because thousands of staff and students regularly did simple things like turning off lights, computers, photocopiers and printers at the end of the day. These actions added tremendously to the on-going work by Facilities and Services to make our buildings more energy-efficient."

Paul said that special mention must go to Parkville campus for its outstanding performance, with a combination of infrastructure improvements and hard work by a number of dedicated staff demonstrating that the university can drastically reduce its energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. 

As part of the energy challenge, Monash staff and students were asked to submit their off-peak power-saving ideas when they registered for the challenge. The winning power-saving idea came from Dr Ian Watkins, Resources Director for the Department of Materials Engineering. TOES is already working with ITS to implement Dr Watkins’ suggestion to apply power-saving settings to all university computers in concert with the university’s Lotus Notes migration.

TOES also commended three other outstanding ideas: to turn-off lights and heating / cooling in un-used teaching spaces by linking the booking system to the building management system (from Professor Margaret Lindorff, Department of Management); to regularly publish photographs of Monash buildings at night (from Pro-Vice Chancellor, Planning, Freya Troedel); and to have an on-line system that allows staff and students to register when rooms are empty, and then for those confirmed details to be posted near the room so that anyone passing has the authority to switch off the lighting and equipment in that room if necessary (Alexandros Lambrou, student, Faculty of Business and Economics)

Paul also congratulated staff and students at Berwick, Peninsula, Caulfield and Gippsland for working hard to make large off-peak reductions.

 “The challenge for all campuses now, however, is to maintain these energy reductions. The Office of Environmental Sustainability will soon roll-out its next energy challenge to encourage as many staff and students to apply power-saving settings to their computers and office equipment."

“As this challenge proved, the individual actions of thousands of Monash University staff and students are the key to successfully greening up our act,” Paul said.

Monash Energy Challenge – Off-Peak Power Results

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