6 things to spend DfE energy efficiency funding on
In December, the Department for Education released new energy efficiency guidance for the school and further education estate. At the same time they announced that every state school in England would receive funding towards energy efficiency improvements. If anyone hasn’t spent it already, here is our guide on the most important things to use it for:
- Controls
- Solar panels
- Lighting
- Equipment
- Water heaters
- Insulation
This is not an exhaustive list and we thoroughly recommend schools and trusts make an assessment of their energy use to judge what improvements are best for them. Understanding your energy use is the first recommendation in the DfE guidance. We’ll be running another training session on how to use Energy Sparks to prioritise behavioural change and capital investment on the 1st March.
This might be a sneaky catch all heading which covers all sorts of things. But, the thing we talk about most in Energy Sparks is making sure that energy isn’t wasted – that schools are only heated and powered when they need to be. This is the cheapest and easiest way to reduce energy use. But how can schools get that right every single day of the year? Controls.
In a well managed school the heating comes on for a couple of hours before the pupils arrive to get the building up to temperature. It can then go off again half an hour before the end of school and the thermal mass of the school should keep it warm enough until the teachers leave. Boilers need to have timers which can do this, and also have frost protection settings for weekends and holidays so the heating isn’t just left on everyday.
Having boiler controls which include ‘optimum start control’ means the boiler will look at the outside and inside temperatures and automatically schedule the heating to start earlier in colder weather and later in milder weather. This is often faulty or isn’t configured correctly, so make sure that if your school has this, it is working as it should. Energy Sparks schools can review their heating performance on their energy analysis pages.
Installing or improving zoned heating controls can also help reduce energy consumption and improve comfort. Many schools will have a warm side and a cold side – the cold side struggles to come up to a comfortable temperature while on the hot side, the windows are thrown open to keep cool. Schools often have weekend and holiday use where only a part of the school needs to be heated. It can be as simple as installing thermostatic radiator valves around the school, or upgrading the Building Energy Management System (BMS).
Zoned controls also mean getting the temperature right in different areas of the school. If rooms are too warm, we’re not just wasting fuel, we’re making it harder for students to learn. Classrooms should be 18°C, areas of high movement like sports halls and corridors should be 15°C and areas of very low movement should be 21°C.
Hot water shouldn’t be ignored in all this – it tends to make up about 40% of a school’s gas consumption. Hot water systems in large buildings are inherently inefficient, with long pipes circulating water and losing heat all the time. Schools are often told to keep their heating on constantly to reduce legionella risk. This is not true. The new DfE guidance confirms this and refers to the HSE legionnaires guidance. So making sure that hot water also has timers fitted so that it can be switched off overnight, at weekends and during the holidays is a great investment. Don’t forget to flush systems at the end of long periods of closure.
It’s not just the boiler that needs better controls. Storage heaters fitted with 7 day timers to switch them off at weekends can save a school thousands of pounds a year. Timer switches on lighting and equipment all around the school can really help too – water boilers and coolers in staff rooms, air conditioners, fume cupboards, even point of use electric water heaters.
A school’s top priority should really be reducing energy waste. But with energy prices rising, the payback period for solar installations is getting shorter all the time. Schools are very good candidates for solar panels – generally peak solar production coincides with when the school is occupied. Excess electricity during the summer holidays can also be sold back to the grid. For Energy Sparks schools, we produce an estimate of the best size of solar array for your school and its electricity consumption.
We talked about timers and sensors in the section above but worth repeating it here. Motion sensor and daylight sensors on lighting, when combined with LED replacement can reduce energy consumption of lighting by 84%. A number of our multi academy trusts are using this as an opportunity to upgrade lighting across their whole estate. Energy Sparks school should be able to spot inefficient security lighting if their overnight electricity consumption is higher in the winter than the summer. Movement sensors on these will reduce energy consumption and alert people to movement around the school. Don’t forget to include daylight sensors and appropriate lag times when installing and setting up.
We’ve established that we like timers. But what about things that need to stay on all the time? Fridges, freezers and ICT servers are the main things here – although it is possible to put servers into standby overnight.
Many schools are moving from physical servers to cloud based systems. This can save money on energy and licensing costs. It’s also possible to replace existing servers with more efficient ones and even consolidate multiple servers into one. A server which uses 500 W, used constantly through the whole year will cost a school £600 in energy – if that school is lucky enough to still be on a 15p/kWh tariff. See this case study for an example of a school that is saving thousands of pounds a year through doing just that.
Fridges and freezers can cost £600 or more per year to run. A modern version could cost 10% of that. Using plug in energy monitors with students can help establish which appliances are using the most energy in order to prioritise which ones to replace.
Centralised hot water systems are inherently inefficient. Hot water circulates around a long system of pipes, making sure that the water coming out of taps is always hot. A lot can be done to reduce waste by improving the controls (we like controls). However, installing electric point of use water heaters can – for some schools – dramatically reduce costs associated with hot water and is the low carbon option for hot water.
On the whole, we would put insulation lower down the priority list unless there are obvious draughts or clearly exposed heat sources. Do consider draught proofing windows and doors and do consider insulating pipework, particularly in boiler rooms. Do buy a cover for your swimming pool. But for most schools, reducing the amount of energy we put into it is more important than reducing the amount that escapes.
