What do we mean by recent changes?
This page makes note of whether your gas use has increased or decreased recently. Monitoring recent changes to your energy use can help you to assess the impacts of changes you have made, or quickly identify problems.
We also include degree days in some of our gas use charts. Degree days are related to the inverse of temperature. The higher the degree days the lower the temperature. See a more detailed explanation
here . If your school's heating system has good thermostatic control, degree days should track the gas usage quite closely.
Common causes of an increase in gas use
- A drop in temperature
- Changes to central heating settings
- Doors and windows being left open in the school
What you should do if you observe an increase in gas use
- Check that gas use is tracking against degree days in gas consumption charts.
- Make sure that frost protection settings are set correctly so that your school is only heated enough to prevent frost damage and is not heated to full temperature when the school is empty.
- Check staff or students have not increased the set temperature on heating thermostats.
- Check with staff and pupils whether doors and windows are left open and if it is due to high temperatures, look at adjusting heating settings
- Review the heating control advice page.