Energy Star - only as good as the user

Just because a product is labelled Energy Star doesn't mean you will see the savings unless you use the product correctly. I recently went to a symposium at BERC - Berkeley Energy Research Center. The super academic panel was discussing the energy efficiency at one of the engineering buildings. One of the professors went in at night and saw that all of the monitors were on, with the message - Cable unplugged - floating all over the screen. Using a simple kilowatt meter it became quickly apparent that they were not in hibernate mode. It appears that the students turned off their computers, expecting the monitors to go off, but they went into a mode showing there was a problem and were running at full power. But, one of the profs commented, we bought Energy Star!!!

After the talk I went to a poster session at Soda Hall. The conference room has a wall of windows - good day lighting. All the lights along the windows were on. There was a bank of 5 controls for lighting by the door, each labelled with what zone they controlled. The person running the event wasn't aware there was an issue or a way to control it.

This is a problem seen over and over again at talks that I go to.

First, a product is purchased and installed or used with no check that it is actually performing the energy savings it was bought for. Automated systems and commissioning are supposed to stop this problem in large buildings. What about the rest of us? Sustainable Spaces/Recurve is working in what I would call the commissioning of residential HVAC - examples - you get insulation in your attic and get a tax credit. But was it properly installed and is it really doing anything? Most likely, either no or not all it could do.

Second, the user does not know or is even aware of the proper use of the product to realize the energy savings. Just in a few hours I saw/heard 2 examples! I find this one to be a much tougher issue. It's training, organizational knowledge of a very transient population.