Okay, so I'm totally geeking out but I don't care, because I think this is so awesome I HAVE to share it.
One of the classes I'm taking is Sustainable Building Design. For my midterm paper for this class, I had to visit a 'green' building, tour it and learn about some of the sustainable design principles and technology it incorporates. I visited a Harvard building, as Harvard has been doing a LOT of sustainable building for the past ten years or so (I think any new buildings or renovations that the university conducts must be certified at the LEED Silver level, minimum; the building I toured is LEED Gold, the next level up). I took a tour yesterday with a classmate at Hyerly Hall, which is office and workspace for employees and fellows at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study. At the end of our tour, we spent a good half hour or 45 minutes playing with a real-time data monitoring system near the front door. It was a touch-screen apparatus where you could see the real-time water, electricity and heating usage, as well as historical usage data, and other information like local weather conditions, GPS bus tracking, and get a general overview of the building's systems and LEED features (the geothermal heating/cooling system is a technological masterpiece).
While researching further information and details to write my paper, I discovered online access to this piece of awesomeness. I could mess around with this for hours. It's just so awesome (at least to me) I had to share it here.
Plus the building is profiled on Harvard's Sustainability Office's site.