UIS Summary

Campus Infrastructure Services (CIS) is responsible for the infrastructure and building services of the University of Sydney, including the provision, maintenance and monitoring of utility services - principally electricity, water and gas.

Over recent years, these markets have been undergoing a process of deregulation. The supply and distribution of utilities is changing from bureaucratic state-regulated monopolies, to a fiercely competitive national market.

Being a multi-million dollar energy consumer, the university developed the Utility Information System to reap the benefits of deregulation and show its inventive environmental credentials.

The application and database was developed by Information and Communication Technology working closely with CIS and has been in operation for over 7 years.

The system involves extensive integration through a Sybase database. Consumption and cost information is taken from file imports, data entry and continuous meter reading software and processed in three stages for analysis via Excel, reporting via the Internet and sub-billing via Peoplesoft Financials.

Essential was a high degree of software intelligence. With millions of datapoints to process each month, the system manages internal workflows, makes inferences from the campus utility network, provides interim and final results and identifies likely sources of energy loss and supplier billing errors.

Utility Information System allows the university to:

• Import electronic files from utility suppliers and university-owned metering devices.
• Record monthly electricity, water and gas consumption, accurately via data entry in a user-friendly manner.
• Access via the Internet, consumption and cost data over a three year period in a graphical and tabular format.
• Create spreadsheets with dynamic access to stored consumption and cost data.
• Generate summary or other derived data using complex consumption formulae.
• Allow managers to perform data simulations and "what-if" scenarios of their own design using the spreadsheet.
• Provide a single journal and internet statement for each department and other institution which covers electricity, gas and water consumption and costs, eliminating paperwork and reconciliation effort.

Documents

• Uni News - University starts saving for a rainy day (26 Nov 2004)

• Energy Bytes - Conference Paper on the Utility Information System (PDF 340kB)

• Water Backgrounder (PDF 220kB)

• Sample Usage Report showing integrated utility statement