Energy Performance Visualization of Buildings

Electricity consumption of a building can be broken down into three different categories based on their end use. These categories are plug load, lighting load and mechanical load. This break down of electricity consumption is enabled by a Building Management System (BMS) which is powered by a collection of sensors in the building and a software. However, in the building management industry it is common to overlook the meaningful patterns and trends in the collected data due to a lack of proper visualization idiom. The Center for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) on the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus is no exception to it. The aim of this project was to design a visualization idiom that would give the managers of CIRS an insight into the energy performance of the building and also provide them with a better understanding of its consumption regimes. The managers identified four high level goals in the interviews conducted by me. The data collected from the building was visualized by the means of an interactive line chart, a pie chart and a day/hour heatmap. The interactive line chart and pie chart were designed to discover the overall trends along with knowing the contribution of different parts. The heatmap enabled the managers to look at what an average week would look like in the building. Lastly, the idiom was designed using javaScript libraries,namely D3.js and highcharts, to grant the managers their last request to have it easily published on the web.