From measurements to sustainable choices [Persepectives]

For measurement of energy consumption to be truly useful for sustainability measures, the measurement of energy consumption in a building must be real-time, frequent, holistic, and most importantly disaggregated. Holistic implies that measurements must encompass all forms of energy use, both direct (electricity and natural gas) and indirect (water embedded energy), and being disaggregated requires that energy use must be at the level of devices and appliances as opposed for the whole building. Conventional solutions to measuring disaggregated end use of electricity and water require deploying at each end-point precalibrated in-line mesh networked sensors for measuring voltage/current, water flow rate, etc. Besides being costly, such “direct sensors”are aesthetically intrusive, and often need costly professional installation and impose network management burden.