Request Access to Energy Data

The Facilities Management Department (FMD) welcomes the opportunity to work with students and faculty members who would like to analyze Duke's energy usage. In addition to providing data to support work by Duke community members, FMD can help students and faculty identify real, practical research projects that can both accomplish academic research goals and improve FMD's operation of campus.

Available Data

Access provided through this form will include consumption figures for Duke's campuses, broken down by building, utility, and month. Duke tracks data for these utilities: electricity, steam, chilled water, water and sewer, and storm water.

Generally data are recorded each month for each campus building. Data is available for 5-10 historical years, depending on the building and utility. Electricity, steam, and chilled water, while measured separately, are also compiled together via energy conversion factors to provide like-to-like comparisons of total energy usage (expressed in kBtu).

Data is recorded in a software package called EnergyWitness (developed by Interval Data Systems). This system is protected by an authentication process that requires individual Duke NetIDs to be activated for use.

Availability

Duke's energy data is available to students, faculty, and staff who would like to work with it. Interested parties should contact Duke Facilities for authorization to use EnergyWitness.

Interface

EnergyWitness provides a graphical, browser-based interface, and a method to export data. Within EnergyWitness, commonly used reports include:

  • Building Summary - This analysis tool provides a broad range of building utility information. It shows historical energy consumption and costs, the building’s energy baseline (based upon regression analysis), and tracking for both utility consumption and Green House Gas emissions.
  • Energy and Greenhouse Gas Reports - These reports provide a picture of total energy (in kBtus), and related carbon footprint (in MTCDE), for buildings and building groups across multiple years.
  • Utility Reports - This report collection provides monthly utility data for one or more buildings across any number of years.

Data Formats

Data exports can be in CSV, Excel, XHTML, and other formats. Several data samples are available. There is currently no machine interface or API to EnergyWitness.

Building Internals

Duke University uses Siemens' building automation software (BAS) to operate most University buildings. BAS applications control heating and cooling, lighting, and other systems within buildings. FMD has the capacity to log data about each of these systems, including air handling, power consumption, and chilled water circulation. Data can be logged at a wide range of intervals, from once a second to once every few hours.

The Facilities Management Department selectively logs data about specific building systems and features to meet their day-to-day needs, but these data are not shared publicly. Individuals with research projects can work with Facilities to log and review data about building systems of interest to them.

Acceptable Uses

Data provided by FMD may be used for general purposes within Duke University. Raw data may not be transferred outside of the University without explicit consent of the Duke Energy Manager. FMD does not guarantee the accuracy of the available data. Researches are individually responsible for managing concerns about data quality.

To request data, send an email to Energy Manager and include the following in your email:

  • Your name and affiliation (if multiple, choose the role from which you are making this request), and the School.
  • Explanation of why you want the data.
  • Description of who you may share raw data.

Energy Data Samples

You must have a valid Duke NetID to download these files, as this content is for use only within the Duke community. Do not distribute elsewhere.

These data samples have been downloaded directly from EnergyWitness and are designed to give a sense for the data available in that system. The descriptions listed here represent the exact steps in EnergyWitness one needs to follow to reproduce the downloads.

Sample 1

Energy / Greenhouse Gas by Group by Building
University-A&S, University-University, All Buildings
Chilled Water, Electric, Steam
FY2006-FY2012

Download Sample 1 (123KB)

Sample 2

Facility Utility Summary
Engineering-All Buildings
All utilities
FY2007-FY2012

Download Sample 2 (545 KB)

Sample 3

Energy / Greenhouse Gas by Building
University-Engineering
Chilled Water, Electric, Steam
FY2012
Click Fitzpatrick to go into the By Building subreport, then Fitzpatrick again to go to the Monthly data report.

Download Sample 3

Sample 4

Data Crosstab
University A&S, All Buildings
Chilled Water, Electric, Steam, Storm Water
FY 2008-FY2012

Download Sample 4 (156KB)