How to enrol

Enrolling your school, trust or local authority with Energy Sparks

Audience

This page provides help for anyone using the Energy Sparks website.

Overview

This page summarises the process of enrolling your school, Trust or Local Authority in Energy Sparks so they can use our energy management tool. 

There are two steps: 

  1. Enrolling - providing us with the necessary information so we can access your data.
  2. Account set up - setting up the school account(s).

Before enrolling we suggest reviewing:

  • A summary of the basic requirements for who can join Energy Sparks, including what meters, data and permissions are required.
  • Our prices, and expectations if you are applying for a free place(s).
  • The information on this page to understand what we need from you to get started, and what’s involved.

Note: If you don’t have half-hourly metering for any utilities, please contact your energy supplier to request a meter upgrade before enrolling.


If you’ve already started enrolling, and have received an invitation to set up your school on Energy Sparks, then we have a separate page with support for the account set up process.

Enrol a school

To enrol as an individual school we need you to:

  1. Complete our school enrollment form. We need some details about the energy supply and metering at the school(s) you wish to enrol. We will also need you to nominate your Energy Sparks Champion. This is normally a member of the school leadership team, such as the school business manager or the school’s sustainability lead. They will be responsible for completing the account set up process and will become the School admin on Energy Sparks.
  2. Sign and send us a Letter of Authority. This will allow us to start the process of accessing your half-hourly energy data. Please use our standard templates and add a hand-written or electronic signature and email the completed document to us.
  3. Send us a spreadsheet of your energy meters. We need to know the meter types and the MPAN for each electricity meter and MPRN for each gas meter. You can email this to us with your Letter of Authority.

Once we have this information, we will:

  • Send an invitation to set up your school account. After checking your meter details, we will email your Energy Sparks Champion to ask them to set up the account. We will normally do this within a few days.
  • Start accessing your meter data. We will contact your energy supplier to arrange access to data. If you already have half-hourly metering installed, this will normally take less than two weeks.

Once your school account is set up, you can immediately start using some features of Energy Sparks. We will email you when your school’s data is available with more advice about how to get the most from our tool.

Unless you have a free place, we will invoice your school once we can display data for at least one utility (gas or electricity).

Enrol as a Multi-Academy Trust or Local Authority

The process for enrolling a Multi-Academy Trust or Local Authority involves:

  1. Completing the Multi-Academy Trust or Local Authority enrolment form. We will need some details about the energy supply and metering at the schools you wish to enrol.
  2. Signing and sending us a Letter of Authority. This will allow us to start the process of accessing your half-hourly energy data. Please use our standard templates and add a handwritten or electronic signature and email the completed document to us.
  3. Sending us a spreadsheet of your energy meters. For all the schools that will be joining us, we need to know the meter types and the MPAN for each electricity meter and MPRN for each gas meter.

Once we have this information, we will:

  • Start accessing your meter data. We will contact your energy supplier to arrange access to data. If you already have half-hourly metering installed, this will normally take less than two weeks.
  • Confirm with you how the individual school accounts will be set up. As described below, this can be done centrally or delegated to each school.
  • Send out invitations to set up the individual school accounts. The set up process takes about 10 minutes per school. Once completed, schools will immediately be able to start using some Energy Sparks features.

Every school that joins Energy Sparks needs a school account. 

Some Trusts or Local Authorities prefer to do this centrally with a single person completing the account set up process for each school, adding individual school admin and staff users for each school.

Alternatively the individual schools can take responsibility for setting up their own accounts. In this case, we will need to have the name and email address for the Energy Sparks Champion at each school. 

The person completing the account set up process will need to have the authority to give consent for the school’s energy data to be obtained by Energy Sparks and published on the Energy Sparks website. For this reason, the initial account set up is usually completed by a member of the school leadership team, such as the school business manager or the school’s sustainability lead.