Damers First School - Energy Sparks South West Regional and National Champions
Damers First School have become the Energy Sparks South West Regional and National Champions! They have won £1250 to go towards an energy saving improvement or sustainability project within the school. Over 1000 primary and secondary schools took part.Energy Sparks is an online, school-specific energy analysis tool, energy education programme. Schools score points by recording their activities to investigate their energy use, learning about energy, and taking energy saving actions around their school.Damers First School pupils worked on different activities and actions from September 2022 to June 2023 to reduce their energy consumption. By using this Educational Programme to analyse daily, weekly and monthly data they have reduced the schools energy consumption by 12% this academic year.The key to Damers success was the children including as many people as possible in their sustainability activities, including:GovernorsWessex MAT TrusteesKitchen staffCleanersLunchtime supervisorsCaretakerParentsand a local residents’ groupThe children have run a Powerdown Day, sustainable travel days and worked closely with the caretaker, Mr Tims to action energy efficiency measures like changing heating times, temperatures and identifying inefficient lights that needed replacing.Thanks to the DfE Energy Efficiency funding that all schools received at the end of last year. Damers First School has added Endotherm to their Gas Boiler which helps the systems work more efficiently saving the school at least 15%. All their lighting is now LED. More solar panels are being fitted to the school by local company Wessex Eco Energy which will then generate 40% of the school’s energy. Then some super sockets by Measurable Energy will be installed combined with machine learning and software. This allows sockets to automatically identify devices plugged in, monitor their energy use, report real-time data and automatically turn devices on/off to avoid wasted energy. The sockets use a light to indicate if the energy is coming from the solar (green) or from the grid (red).