The Kukui Cup: A Dorm Energy Competition Focused on Sustainable Behavior Change and Energy Literacy

The Kukui Cup is an advanced dorm energy competition whose goal is to investigate the relationships among energy literacy, sustained energy conservation, and information technology support of behavior change. Two general purpose open source systems have been implemented: WattDepot and Makahiki. WattDepot provides enterprise-level collection, storage, analysis, and visualization of energy data. Makahiki is a web application framework that supports dorm energy competitions of varying degrees of complexity, including a personalized homepage where participants can complete tasks designed to increase energy literacy that can be verified by competition administrators. The technology and approach will be evaluated in a dorm energy competition to take place in the Spring of 2011, with hundreds of University freshmen. The energy use of each pair of dormitory floors will be metered in near-realtime, and the energy literacy of participants will be assessed before and after the competition.