Shreya Indukuri and Daniela Lapidous may never be as famous as Apple’s Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, or as Microsoft’s Bill Gates (News - Alert) and Paul Allen, but they already are showing the same entrepreneurial spirit and technological bent.

 In the spring of their freshman year (2009) at the Harker Upper School in San Jose, California, the two young women sat next to each other at an assembly, where they heard about the goals of the Oakland, California-based Alliance for Climate Education. “We were blown away by their amazing, interactive presentation on climate change and we felt compelled to act. When they offered an opportunity to apply for grants, we said, ‘Why not?’” Indukuri and Lapidous recall.

ACE awarded the team $5,500 to execute a school project, part of which involved installing submetering technology and software that enabled them to measure their school’s energy consumption in unprecedented detail: by building; by room; and by specific systems, or water and electrical outlets. They discovered that the air conditioning was needlessly running in the gym at night, which led to an operational change that helped the school earn a 250 percent return on investment.

In June 2011, Indukuri and Lapidous , who have since launched the nonprofit organization, SmartPowerEd , to empower students at other high schools to lead similar project for themselves, were the surprise stars of a White House event on smart grid policy 

“What those students discovered was the potential benefit of submetering — the use of monitoring and measurement technologies to provide real-time information about resource use that can help pinpoint variations in performance, optimize automated building systems, and encourage building managers and occupants to adopt energy-conserving behaviors,”  said Nick Sinai, senior advisor to the U.S. Chief Technology Officer.

In fact, according to the Office of Science and Technology Policy, submetering systems can make major inroads into worldwide energy consumption. Today, commercial and residential buildings consume about one-third of the world’s energy and account for more than 40 percent of total U.S. energy consumption. If current trends continue, by 2025, buildings worldwide will consume more energy than the transportation and industry sectors combined.

This week, the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC)—a cabinet-level interagency group of scientists and engineers—has released a new report,  Submetering of Building Energy and Water Usage: Guidance and Recommendations of the Subcommittee on Buildings Technology Research and Development, which recommends systematic consideration of submetering technologies that can yield up-to-date, granular snapshots of energy and water use in commercial and residential buildings to drive energy efficiency and capture the advantages of a modernized electric power grid.

The role of submetering is expected to grow over time as building performance requirements become increasingly stringent. To meet these future requirements, the NSTC Subcommittee on Buildings Research and Development makes the following recommendations:

• As part of overall building design and retrofit projects, building owners should evaluate the economic and technical feasibility of submetering, using life cycle cost analysis for the economic justification and business-case development.
• When evaluating submetering opportunities, design teams should collaborate with building owners, operators, and occupants; as well as design, engineering, and information technology professionals to identify data needs and appropriate submetering systems and configurations.
• Submetering systems should, when possible, be integrated into building automation systems and used to identify building system dysfunction, to improve operational procedures, drive behavioral changes that improve building energy efficiency and conservation, and augment building-side automation systems that interface with the smart grid.
• Submetering systems should be operated as production-quality building management systems with high levels of reliability, information assurance, and security, established data acquisition/ archival procedures, and periodic system maintenance requirements.

The report asserts, “Submetering provides the necessary infrastructure for more advanced conservation and efficiency techniques.”  And while the return on investment (ROI) for submeters depends on specific energy-efficiency strategies that may vary by climate, building type, and other factors, "numerous case studies provide evidence that the ROI can be significant.”

Among the case studies  is a corporate success story: About half of the 52-story Bank of America Building in San Francisco was submetered after energy managers learned that tenants exceeded by as much as three-fold their energy allowance of 3 kilowatts per square foot. More than 120 submeters were installed, and the property owner saved $1 million in excess energy usage in the first year alone. The cost of the submetering hardware and software in this application resulted in a payback period of days, not years, complemented by energy usage and cost savings of 30 percent per year.

“The refined measurement of energy and water use represents a key enabler for the improved performance of new and existing buildings,” stated John P. Holden, director, Office of Science and Technology Policy. “For building operators, a detailed record of system performance provides a critical means of not only detecting system malfunctions easily, but also focusing future design and retrofit activities on the most cost-effective energy and water system improvements. For building occupants, detailed information on consumption promotes resource conservation through behavioral changes.”

He added that he hoped and anticipated “that this report will provide the basis to initiate new federal submetering demonstrations that can document even greater energy- and water-use effectiveness that will, in turn, result in increased adoption of submetering by federal and private-sector building owners.“