Energy!

Knowing how much electricity and fuel your school uses and how much it costs will help your school become more efficient and identify ways to become better stewards of limited energy resources. Advice about becoming an energy efficient school is available from the National Energy Research Institute.

What data will we collect?

• What the school pays for energy use. 
• The type and amount of various forms of energy your school uses.
• Whether or not you have on-site electricity generation or capture solar thermal energy for heating. If your school has alternative electricity generation on site, you will need to have meters installed so that you can monitor how much electricity is being generated. 

How much time will it take?

For Energy! you may decide to collect all of your data on one day of the year, or you may prefer to collect data once a term. You will need to set up a process to ensure you will have access to all the electricity and fuel accounts when you need them and that you have any monitoring devices that you need installed. These devices may need monitoring on a more regular basis.

A small team should be enough to go through your records for the year and transfer the information onto the Energy! Annual Summary. 

You will need:

• To talk to your administration staff and arrange a time to go through school electricity and fuel accounts and related information.
• Copies of your school accounts for electricity and gas and information on the cost and amount of other energy sources used such as diesel, coal, firewood and biofuels. For gas you will need gas accounts and information on the size and how many gas bottles you use.
• To find about any on-site electricity generation at your school such as photovoltaic panels or wind turbines and gather information on how much electricity is generated on site. You may need to have monitoring devices installed so that you can record how much electricity is generated.
• A tape measure and access to solar thermal heating panels to measure their area.

What will be in our Energy! Report?

Once you have completed a years worth of energy data on your Energy! Annual Summary and entered it online, you will get a report summarising this data. Your data will be converted into efficiencies based on how much of these forms of energy each person in your school uses or how much your buildings use. Over time as you submit more data you will get trend information showing your progress. You will also get comparisons between your school and other schools in your region and in New Zealand. 

- ENERGY! Annual Summary.pdf

- ENERGY! Data Collection Sheets.pdf

- ENERGY! Teacher Support Activities.pdf