Started a whole school switch-off campaign
Get the whole school involved in switching off electrical equipment left running overnight, at weekends and in the school holidays
30 points for this action
Overview
Campaign hints and tips
Your school should only use a small amount of electricity overnight, at the weekends and during the school holidays for items such as fridges, freezers and servers. It is likely though that your school is leaving other items on overnight. An out-of-hours survey will help you identify these items so they can be switched off.
Your school should only use a small amount of electricity overnight, at the weekends and during the school holidays for items such as fridges, freezers and servers. It is likely though that your school is leaving other items on overnight. An out-of-hours survey will help you identify these items so they can be switched off.
- Check your current overnight, weekend and holiday use using the Energy Sparks hourly usage graphs to compare daytime, night-time, weekend and holiday use of electricity.
- Undertake a detailed survey of all school rooms. Do not forget the boiler room, services rooms and outside. Identify electrical items left on unnecessarily, looking particularly at exterior lighting, IT equipment, electric hot water heaters, pumps and other plant room equipment.
- Make a list of the electrical equipment in each room and apply a coloured sticker to the switch of each device. A traffic light coding system should be used for the stickers as follows:
- Green indicates equipment which should be switched off by pupils when not in use. (For example, PCs, projectors and interactive whiteboards.)
- Amber highlights equipment which should be switched off after checking with a member of staff that no-one is using it. (For example, the main office computers or photocopier.)
- Red indicates equipment which should never be switched off. (For example, network servers, freezers or fridges.)
- Switch off all equipment labelled with a green or amber sticker. Empower your pupils to take on this responsiblity at the end of each school day and before lunch breaks.
- After switching off all unnecessary electrical equipment, it will be useful to check your savings. Use the Energy Sparks charts to compare your school's energy use across the day before and after the switch off campaign.
- Carry out extra checks when you close up for the school holidays to make sure that everything that can be turned off is off. Leaving equipment on over the holidays will use a lot of unnecessary electricity.