Analyse your school energy use - what's happening in the school kitchen?

Analyse your school's kitchen energy use and interview kitchen staff to understand how their behaviour fits with the data

10 KS1 KS2 KS3 KS4 KS5 Citizenship Mathematics and Numeracy
School kitchens can consume a lot of electricity.  To produce hundreds of dinners to be served in a very short period of time, schools need industrial scale equipment.

Let's look at the data from schools with kitchens and schools with out.  Compare the graphs of Schools and A and B with those of Schools C, D and E.  The schools in one group have a kitchen onsite, the others do not.  Can you tell which is which?   

Group 1
 
Group 2


Create a questionnaire to ask your kitchen staff about their energy use.  You may want to ask questions like:

  • When you do arrive and leave?  
  • What equipment do you switch on when you arrive?
  • What time are the ovens/ dishwashers/sterilisers/ ventilation hoods/ kettles turned on and off?
  • When do fridges and freezers get turned off?  




Answers
The schools in Group A have kitchens.  Their energy consumption is typically high until lunchtime then tails off.