The Greenschools competition is ready to start!
Launch of the call for the 6th edition of the Greenschools Competition in the Province of Treviso
In the Alveare website, a website dedicated to the topic of energy management in the upper secondary schools managed by the Province of Treviso, the call for the sixth edition of the Greenschools competition has been published and is available at the following link: http://www.100scuole.it/news-dettaglio.aspx?id=363. The competition is also open to the eight upper secondary schools involved in the project TOGETHER. The text will soon be available in English to inspire anyone who is interested in launching a competition between buildings!
What are the connections with the project TOGETHER? 8 out of 20 pilot buildings involved in the project TOGETHER can participate in the Competition that aims at concretely measuring energy reduction. In fact, energy consumption is monitored through the smart meters installed several years ago in all the buildings belonging to the Province of Treviso.
The terms of reference to take part in the Green Schools Competition present some important changes that have been introduced also taking into account the implementation of the project TOGETHER. The project highlighted the need of measuring consumption and the possible actions to improve energy efficiency also by addressing the behaviours of the stakeholders who live in the public buildings: managers, owners and final users. In fact, thanks to the project TOGETHER, not only it has been possible to upgrade the measuring capacity of the Province of Treviso, but also to extend the concept of the importance of measuring energy consumption to the management systems of 12 municipal public buildings.
In addition, the project TOGETHER allowed to organise “Behavioural Demand Side Management and Analytic Demand Side Management” paths, which are present within the framework of the tools elaborated by the partnership and published in the project website.
The sixth edition will focus on monitoring electricity savings, which will be assessed and awarded with monetary prizes. Moreover, the sixth edition is organized after the logic of the Living Lab that is crucial for the project TOGETHER. In fact, end-users are not only the target of trainings or of energy management decisions concerning them, but they are part of the decisions, as they are involved in the so called Negotiating Panel, developed through a specific tool of the project TOGETHER and available in the project library (see URL http://www.interreg-central.eu/Content.Node/TOGETHER.html).
Finally, the current competition is a strong example of “gamification”, which is defined by Wikipedia as “the application of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts.”
The structure and terms of reference of the competition can be of inspiration for the TOGETHER partners as well as for other interested administrations. The added value provided by this kind of competition consists in the fact that it is based on the real measurement and not only on general criteria and on the assessment of “good intentions”.
