Baseload analysis

What is baseload?

Electricity baseload is the electricity needed to provide power to appliances that keep running at all times. It can be measured by looking at the power a school consumes out of hours when the school is unoccupied. This is one of the most useful benchmarks for understanding a school's electricity use. Usually, more than half the electricity in schools is consumed out of hours, therefore reducing the baseload will have a big impact on overall electricity consumption and is one of the fastest ways to reduce energy consumption. 

All schools should aim to reduce their electricity baseload per pupil to that of the best schools. Schools perform roughly the same function so should be able to achieve similar electricity consumption particularly out of hours. Energy Sparks carries out a range of analysis on your baseload to help you understand how to improve it. This analysis for your school is contained in the analysis tab, and an explanation of each of these analyses and how to reduce your baseload appears below.

Potential savings

Reducing a school's baseload is one of the fastest ways to reduce energy consumption, and save money and carbon dioxide. For each 1 kW reduction in baseload, the school will reduce its overall electricity consumption by 1 kWh for every hour of the year, so over the whole year the reduction will be 8,760 kWh. If a school is paying 15p per kWh, this reduction could save £1,314 per year, if they are paying 30p per kWh that saving would be £2,628. The school would also reduce its carbon footprint by about 1,700 kg CO2 (Government conversion factors for 2022).

Recent changes in baseload

The first analysis measures whether your baseload has changed recently. Baseload should stay the same throughout the year, so it shouldn’t have changed recently, any increase should be investigated. If you have installed new equipment, to replace old then you would expect consumption to reduce as new equipment is almost always more efficient than old.

Looking at the baseload chart for your school, has your baseload changed recently, did it jump on a particular date and can you track down and remediate the cause? This will require some detective work and asking others at the school if they recollect anything changing recently.

Comparison with other schools, benchmark and exemplar schools

The second analysis is to compare your average baseload consumption over the year with other schools with the same number of pupils. 

Unless your school is a special needs school, there is generally not a good reason why your baseload should be higher than similar schools performing similar functions - this consumption is not a function of how old your building is but whether the appliances like fridges, freezers, ICT servers and security lighting are efficient and well managed.

If your usage is high a good starting point would be to audit the overnight electricity usage of appliances at your school using an ‘appliance monitor’. Energy Sparks has an activity for this which can be carried out by pupils here:
  • Focus particularly on commercial fridges and freezers in the school’s kitchen which can often be very inefficient - replacing them can pay back the capital costs with reduced electricity bills very quickly
  • ICT is the other main area to focus on, ask your ICT support team to audit what is being left on overnight and ask whether they have a policy in place to automatically turn off or put appliances into standby when not in use, and whether energy efficiency and sustainability is one of the criteria used in purchasing new equipment?

Seasonal variation in baseload

Electricity baseload is the electricity needed to provide power to appliances that keep running at all times. So you should expect your baseload to remain fairly constant throughout the year. You might observe a dip during the summer holidays if there has been a concerted effort to switch things off - for example by emptying or consolidating fridges and switching ICT servers completely off.

At a well-managed school the baseload should remain the same throughout the year, there should be no reason why the electricity consumption at midnight on a school day should be higher than at midnight in the winter than in the summer.

If there is a large variation in your school's seasonal overnight electricity usage - much higher in the winter than in the summer - it suggests electric heating is left running overnight during the winter or the school has inefficient security or flood lights. 

Variation in baseload between days of week

Some schools might find that there is a large variation in their baseload between days of the week - with weekday overnight usage being higher than weekend overnight usage. This suggests that electrical equipment and appliances are not being switched off overnight during the week. The most common issue is something that is turned on on a Monday and off again on a Friday.

Common causes of high or variable baseload

As well as a high baseload, any large variations in baseload should be investigated. As shown above, at a well-managed school the baseload should remain the same throughout the year, with little variation between overnight electricity consumption in different seasons or on different days of the week. Common causes of a high or variable baseload are:
  • Computers, whiteboards and other electrical equipment left running when the school is closed.
  • Fridges and freezers, particularly inefficient commercial kitchen appliances, which if replaced can provide a very short payback on investment (see our case study on this).
  • ICT servers - can be inefficient, newer ones can often payback their capital costs in electricity savings within a few years (see our case study on this).
  • Security lighting - this can be reduced by using PIR movement detectors - often better for security and by moving to more efficient LED lighting.
  • Hot water heaters and water chillers left on outside school hours - installing a timer or getting the caretaker to switch these off when closing the school at night or on a Friday can make a big difference.

To fully determine the causes of your baseload usage you need to do a survey of what appliances are being left on overnight and their power consumption.
  • Find out whether any electrical equipment or lights are running all the time. Do they need to run all the time?
  • You should check to see what lights and appliances are left on at the end of the school day and get pupils and staff to switch off lights and appliances when they go home, and before the school holidays. Don't forget to look in offices or school kitchens.
  • Use appliance monitors to check how much energy your school fridges and freezers are using, as these need to run all the time. 

What you can do to reduce baseload

Once you have found the reason for a high or variable baseload, think about what you can do about it. A few examples below:
  • Replace an inefficient fridge or freezer. A modern fridge or freezer uses less than £100 of electricity a year, but old models can use over £600 of electricity a year.
  • Consider replacing old ICT servers with modern servers or move to saving your school's data in the 'cloud'. Removing the need for school ICT servers can also save energy previously used for air conditioning in school server rooms. 
  • Consider installing a 7 day timer for some appliances to switch them on on Monday through Friday between school opening hours. This not only saves someone's time but also saves lots of electricity.
  • Get your pupils involved in developing and implementing a policy to ensure everything is switched off at the end of the day.