The Wendel Forum

In Episode 44 of The Wendel Forum (originally aired on Green 960 AM radio on December 10, 2011), show host Dick Lyons talks with Michael Murray, CEO and cofounder of Lucid Design Group in Oakland, California.

Michael shares how his company’s software products influence behavior by providing building utility performance transparency to individuals who occupy commercial buildings.  Lucid’s Building Dashboard® makes energy and water use in commercial buildings visible in real time on the web.   The company has found that by making this information visible, building occupants will adjust their behavior, thereby reducing their usage of these resources by an average of 10-20 percent.

From their Kiosk application, building occupants and visitors can view the building’s performance information in the lobby.  It shows how an individual building ranks against other similar buildings and creates a competitive environment for occupants to contribute to improved performance.  The program measures, tracks, analyzes and displays everything from plug loads to carbon offsets, providing the users with a lot of actionable information about energy usage in a building.

Peer pressure works! 
By creating an environment where conservation becomes the norm, the incremental actions of individuals become a collective force leading to overall savings.  The company taps into social media to build a culture of conservation and has plans to develop mobile apps to make information even more accessible.   These programs move the power (so to speak) for energy conservation out of the exclusive domain of facility managers, building operators and architects and into those of the individual occupants. 

So who owns the data?
Already with a client roster of about 180 customers representing 1300 facilities, their hosted server model allows the company to aggregate a growing repository of valuable information on individual buildings and general behavior related to water and energy use.  Michael and Dick touch on issues related to privacy and data ownership, as well as current and potential uses for the information being collected. 

If you are using this or a similar product, we’d love to hear about your experience.  Did your personal behavior changed after installation?  Any surprises or lessons learned?

Post Links:

Interview with Michael Murray of Lucid Design: Episode 44 of The Wendel Forum (27:35 mins; mp3)

Lucid Design website: www.luciddesigngroup.com

Green 960 AM radio website: http://www.green960.com/main.html

Dick Lyons website profile: http://www.wendel.com/rlyons