Dive Summary:
- The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Building Technologies Program has announced the launch of a competition to develop a $100 electric submeter.
- Elena Alschuler, a DOE specialist in building energy performance, notes that submeters today typically cost more than $1,000, which is too high of a cost for buildings who want to give residents energy information.
- Submeters are currently only being used in 10% to 15% of commercial and multi-family residential buildings, but Pike Research projects the submeter market to double and reach $1.58 billion by 2020.
From the article:
"... 'It’s a bit of a Field of Dreams thing,' Elena Alschuler, a specialist in building energy performance at the DOE, said at the Advanced Energy Conference in New York City. 'If you build it, they will buy it.'
The promise of submeters is that they can help building owners and tenants better understand energy use and help solve the split incentive issue, where the party who pays for energy upgrades isn’t the same as the one who pays the energy bill. ..."