{"id":133810,"date":"2020-06-04T08:11:46","date_gmt":"2020-06-04T12:11:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=133810"},"modified":"2020-06-05T12:28:53","modified_gmt":"2020-06-05T16:28:53","slug":"current-affairs-student-programmers-advance-electricity-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2020\/06\/04\/current-affairs-student-programmers-advance-electricity-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Current affairs: Student programmers simplify electricity management"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Never underestimate the power of chance encounters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Case in point: This summer, Bates is taking a big step forward in its ability to track the use of electricity on campus. And most of the credit goes to a Bates IT staffer and a handful of students who just happened to be in the right places at the right times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until now, Bates energy manager John Rasmussen has analyzed the electricity usage in each of 28 Bates buildings by downloading raw data into spreadsheets. It’s a cumbersome process that takes lots of time and repetition, to say nothing of all the 11-by-17-inch printouts needed for annotating the data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kyung
Kyung Phil Ko \u201922 of Toronto, Canada, poses in his room in the Residential Village. A member of the EcoReps’ Data Group, Ko contributed computational and managerial skills to the electrical usage project. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Now, thanks to the efforts of that student-staff team, Rasmussen can simply call up a dynamic online graph, capable of instantly depicting electrical draws for a given building in increments as fine as 15 minutes or as large as several months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Straightforward and reliable, the setup is \u201cvery helpful in understanding where all this energy\u2019s going,\u201d Rasmussen says, \u201cand where the opportunities might be to make it more efficient.\u201d And it’s key to his larger goal of being able to comprehensively monitor, manage \u2014 and ideally, through consciousness-raising as well as technical upgrades, reduce \u2014 campus consumption of both electricity and fuel for heating buildings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a great project because it lets us see things that were invisible previously,\u201d says Bates sustainability manager Tom Twist. \u201cWe can see in real time what the buildings are doing \u2014 for instance, if we’re heating a building to its full capacity at 2 a.m.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Avi Brach-Neufeld ’20 of Silver Spring, Md., is shown on the porch of his off-campus Lewiston home. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you’re not in the business of energy management, it’s hard to understand the value of being able to quickly visualize energy-use data,\u201d says Rasmussen. His analytical work incorporates not only electrical usage data, but data reflecting the effectiveness of Bates\u2019 campus heating plant<\/a> in each building that it serves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rasmussen adds that it would have cost Bates tens of thousands of dollars to purchase the commercial equivalent of the product put together by Maureen Haining, a Bates programmer analyst, and five students. He says, \u201cThey are pretty sharp kids.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what about those chance encounters? A few years ago, Twist made a presentation to Information and Library Services staff. Haining was there, and it came out that she and Twist live near each other up the Maine coast. So they started carpooling to Bates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of their commuting conversations involved Rasmussen’s travails with the electrical-usage data and the efforts of Bates EcoReps \u2014 students overseen by Twist who undertake sustainability initiatives \u2014 to help with that. Long story short, Haining started working with the EcoReps, including some tutoring in the use of Python, a popular and powerful programming language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
This sample graph from the electrical-usage visualization system shows March 2020 energy use in Ladd Library. For most of the month, there’s daily peak usage during the workday then a dip overnight. But at far right, usage tapers off, during the third week of the month, as students left campus because of the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

They got as far as creating a way to depict static snapshots of electrical draw, an improvement over the printed spreadsheets, but not ideal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast-forward to winter 2020, when Haining began teaching \u201cProgramming for Data Analysis and Visualization,\u201d a one-time Digital and Computational Studies course based largely on Python. (Perhaps reflecting how DCS has elevated awareness of the power of data at Bates, digital resources like Python and R no longer seem as occult to casual observers as they once might have.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lecturer
Programmer Analyst Maureen Haining poses in front of her computer in her Rockport home. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And therein lies the other random encounter. It soon became clear that three seniors in the course \u2014 Leo Crossman, Fahim Khan, and Avi Brach-Neufeld \u2014 already had considerable know-how in the snake-named programming language. (Also involved in the project are two EcoReps, Biruk Chafamo \u201922 of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Kyung Phil Ko \u201922 of Ontario.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey were doing very well, and were very helpful in the classroom with the other students,\u201d says Haining. In fact, the three let on that they\u2019d taken the course mostly because they needed the credits. \u201cSo I said, \u2018Well, then, I have a project for you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crossman, Khan, and Brach-Neufeld teamed up with the EcoReps, specifically that organization’s Data Group, to help with the electrical usage project. Haining\u2019s three \u201clearned a whole new set of skills for visualization,\u201d she says. \u201cFahim had a strong interest in that. Avi leveraged his Python skills to package up and deploy a production level Python application. Leo was very good with JavaScript and knew about web development.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/a>
Bates sustainability manager Tom Twist is shown during the May 2019 Committee on Environmental Responsibility meeting at which it was announced that the college had attained carbon neutrality. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

She adds, \u201cIn all, they worked extremely well as a cross-functional team.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was a good opportunity to work on a real-life coding project as part of DCS course work, and I was excited to do it,\u201d says Khan. A physics major from Dhaka, Bangladesh, Khan starts work this summer as a software developer at Tyler Technologies in Falmouth, Maine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A knotty problem Haining’s team confronted is that the raw data from the electrical submeters is not “clean” \u2014 that is, there may be gaps, spikes, or other anomalies in the data, which emanates from the submeters as data pulses that are stored on a server. (Steam-heat data is even quirkier.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe students automated the process of cleaning the data,\u201d says Twist, \u201cas well as creating that easy visualization tool so that anyone can go in and look at the data, and know pretty quickly if the buildings are behaving the way we wanted them to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey are really bright, motivated kids,\u201d Haining says, \u201cand they’re really good\u201d with the technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Haining deserves a share of the kudos, too, Twist says. \u201cMaureen did a really nice job of shepherding them through all the potential pitfalls and problems that could have just stopped everything cold.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Energy<\/a>
Energy manager John Rasmussen is shown meeting with a class in 2015. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One of the two EcoReps engaged in the project most recently, Kyung Phil Ko is a member of the EcoReps\u2019 Data Group. For him and the EcoReps overall, he says, applying data analysis practices to electrical consumption \u201cprovides valuable insights into larger systemic issues, such as how buildings use an unexpected amount of energy, and cultural issues, like peak energy usage driven by our insatiable demand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those insights can inform how another EcoRep working group, its Media Group, shapes its campus messaging about conserving electricity, as well as \u201cwhat capital investments we ought to recommend\u201d for a third group, Energy Solutions. That’s a particular interest for Ko, whose sights are set on a career in financial initiatives that support sustainability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The project overall \u201cwas definitely a valuable learning experience,\u201d says Brach-Neufeld, a physics major from Silver Spring, Md. Brach-Neufeld, who will start a position as a developer at healthcare software manufacturer Epic Systems in August, did the Python coding that cleans the electrical-use data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn addition to the pure programming knowledge I gained, it was the first time I had delivered a final product,\u201d he says. \u201cPreviously, all of my programming experience had been primarily for my physics research or my own enjoyment. Although it was a challenge, I learned a lot about how to make my programming user-friendly and professional.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Ko, the exposure to programming was fun and beneficial. But more important, he says, \u201cthe soft skills I learned \u2014 to become more comfortable with uncertainty, particularly in the beginning, and relationship management \u2014 are what I’m going to take away the most. Perhaps I would have been more stressed in the past few months if I didn’t have this project to learn such skills.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Views<\/a>
Shown in 2015, these buildings at the heart of the Bates campus are among the 28 whose day-to-day electrical use is tracked by energy manager John Rasmussen. (Josh Kuckens\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a special Digital and Computational Studies project, three seniors join EcoReps to improve how Bates measures campus electrical use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":133941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[232,217,11009],"tags":[11069,9982,4390],"class_list":["post-133810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment-sustainability","category-science-technology","category-the-college","tag-digital-and-computational-studies","tag-electricity","tag-information-and-library-services"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133810"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133933,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133810\/revisions\/133933"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}