Implementation of a Transparent Power Information System on Campus Using Existing Infrastructures

In numerous universities of Taiwan, students must pay an electricity bill for power consumption in their dormitories. In practice, the universities buy a contract capacity from a power company, and act as a middleman between the students and the power company. In this scenario, monitoring campus power consumption is essential so that actions such as load shifting can be taken when the overall power consumption approaches the contract capacity. Conventionally, monitoring the campus´ power consumption is the duty of the university authorities. This study investigated the implementation of an online system that contains detailed information on power consumption. The system aims to provide students with transparent power information to make them aware of the amount of energy they consume. To avoid expensive hardware upgrades, the implementation is based on existing campus infrastructures. It involves the integration of hardware and software components, including an advanced metering infrastructure, a central server, servers and meters in dormitories, and a software system that collects, stores, and presents data in real time. This paper provides a framework for the proposed integration, which has various applications; for example, it can facilitate the creation of high-level smart features such as dynamic pricing and smart load scheduling on campus.