40% Savings at Northampton Academy
The words here from David might not sound like the most inspirational of quotes but they’re music to my ears because these are things we say so often at Energy Sparks. One of the most useful things about seeing a school’s energy data in graphical form is finding out that energy use is high at unexpected times. And nothing we advise schools to do is anything extreme or special. Mainly, it is giving school staff the tools and the permission to try something different and see if it works.
This week we’ve created a case study on the 40% reduction in gas consumption that Northampton Academy have made in their first year since joining Energy Sparks but I thought it was worth a blog post too.
Northampton Academy is a large secondary school of 1,700 pupils in the East Midlands. They joined Energy Sparks in December 2022 and since then the site team has been working hard to reduce the school’s energy consumption.
As a former plumber and domestic energy assessor, Facilities Manager David was sceptical that Energy Sparks could show him anything he didn’t already know about the school’s heating and he wasn’t convinced that significant improvements could be made.
This is something that happens fairly often when schools first use Energy Sparks. We get told our data couldn’t possibly be right because it says the heating is on overnight or at weekends. Data used by Energy Sparks comes directly from smart meters via energy suppliers so this is what schools will be billed for.
However, when David received alerts from Energy Sparks about high gas use when the school was closed, he took the time to investigate what was happening. He found that, although it wasn’t clear from the Building Energy Management System (BEMS), the heating was set to be on for most of the weekend, with only a short break in the middle of each day. With no one in the school to check at these times, it was only when David saw the Energy Sparks gas use charts that he knew this was happening.
The chart below shows gas use during one week in November 2022. The gas on Sunday 20th November cost the school £270 and the temperature wasn’t low enough for the school to need any frost protection.
The school has underfloor heating which takes a long time to heat up but also retains heat well. The heating is now off for most of the weekend, with just a few hours on Sunday evenings to warm up the school for the week ahead. This has saved the school on average more than £200 each weekend.
Heating set temperatures were changed to reflect advice given on the Energy Sparks website. Using Energy Sparks gave David and his team the confidence to know what temperatures to set in different areas of the school and to educate room users about the reasons. He was able to use the Energy Sparks analysis to check on the impacts of the changes, particularly during the periods of adjustment and experimentation.
The charts below show comparisons between two days and two weeks, before and after the changes were made. We have selected weeks with very similar outdoor temperatures so the gas consumption shouldn’t be affected by temperature changes.
David has also noticed high electricity at unexpected times. Ventilation and extraction units were running constantly so these have now been reduced to school occupation times. External lighting times have also been reduced as Energy Sparks charts helped identify that these often came on automatically in the middle of the day.
For Northampton Academy, using Energy Sparks has helped the school to reduce their gas bill by £34,000 and saved 82 tonnes of CO2 this year. But this isn’t where the school is going to stop. As well as continuing with newly formed habits, David plans to build energy efficiency into any refurbishments – he already has the approach of replacing circulatory hot water with electric point of use heaters whenever bathrooms are refurbished. The next big challenge – and one not to be underestimated – will be involving more people. If one David can do all this, what could be achieved by a whole school working together?
If you want to get control over gas use and heating waste at your school, take a look at our heating configuration actions page which will give advice on heating configuration. We also have a fantastic blog post from our CEO Claudia, on what causes heating to come on too early in the morning. For Energy Sparks schools, there is a prize draw for schools completing any of our heating programmes during March and a bonus prize for the school with the biggest % saving compare to the same period last year. See our latest newsletter for more details.
