How to help Partners


Challenge

This past November, we ran an experiment on the UGA campus to see how much electricity we could save through behavioral changes and cash incentives. SMART teams of partners and staff in 12 buildings competed for $2,500 in cash prizes. The SMART team monitoring the Military Building on the UGA campus saved more than 27% electricity from 2 November to 2 December, measured as a percentage of the average used in the same building over past Novembers. Award prizes went to the winning building's custodians, staff, and partners on 9 December during our conference. The winners nearly tripled our goal of 10% reduction of consumption of electricity from previous years!

Winner - The Military Building!

We monitored electricity use in the 12 experimental buildings and in 24 control buildings by photographing the buildings' electric meters up to twice a day on a set schedule. Please see Teams + Buildings + Meters (which may be viewed only by SMART teams, as we wish to keep some control buildings a secret until the experiment is over).

$2,500 in prize money were distributed to the team saving the greatest amount of resources and money. $1,000 was awarded to the winning building's custodians and $1,500 to winning participants from our partner organizations and building staff. If you wish to contribute to the prizes for our next experiment, please send a check to the Polistes Foundation, 133 Washington Street, Belmont, MA 02478. Put 'SMART' in the check's memo. All donations are tax deductible. Please email smart@discoverlife.org if you wish to be a corporate sponsor.

When we find sponsors or can use energy savings as rewards, we plan to organize additional challenges in subsequent months and reward all participants who help in reducing campus energy use. We are particularly interested in partnering with businesses who would like to extend SMART to their workplace.

Updated: 10 December, 2009
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