Energy Management
in School
What is our school doing
to save as much energy as it can? |
|
Hello, we are Koen, Floris, Genaya and Tessa and we like to welcome you to our page.
Our School
Index
- Main question for this project
- Our research for the project
- Describe the School
- Does the school have a policy for saving energy?
- How does the school save energy at the moment?
- Are students expected to implement any of these measures?
- Three aspects that we think should be included in the policy of the school to save energy
- Three different methods that can be used to actively save energy at school
- Interview with ten different students
- Interview with the Janitor of our school
- Communication with the Indian pupils
- Awareness activity
- Compare and contrast with 2 different groups
- Group reflection
- Recommendation for the school
- Conclusion
The main question for this project
The main question for this project was to find out what our school does to save energy and what it still can do to save even more energy.
Our Research for the Project
For our research question, which energy saving measures of the school do you know, we interviewed ten different kids from our school. To find out what they actually were, we interviewed the janitor of our school.
Describe your school
Nehalennia has 2 locations, Breeweg and Kruisweg. Our school is at Breeweg, this is the school we are talking about in this article. Nehalennia is a stone building with a separate part of the building for the first years students and a separate part for the rest of the students. The school has around 1200 Pupils. It has 4 different levels of education and also gives the opportunity to do bilingual education and to follow the extra courses Greek and Latin.
Does the school have a policy for
saving energy?
The faucets at the toilets at our school have a special knob which makes sure that no water is spilled and there isn't a knob for warm water, so no energy is spilled on warming the water. School also has sensors in all the classrooms which makes sure that the lights switch of when there is no movement. To make sure no energy is lost during the holidays, the printers are switched off.
In school the biggest amount of energy is used on heating, cooling and lighting. Also a big part is used for electrical appliences.
How does the school save energy
at the moment?
At this moment energy management isn’t the most important issue that would be student satisfaction as well as the upcoming open day. This does not mean that there aren’t certain things that should be implemented or done to save energy, for example: turning off the computers at the end of a class in the computer room, sensors that will turn off the lights in a classroom when there isn’t anyone in the classroom and the removal of electric garage doors in the PE classrooms (which were replaced by doors that are opened with your hands).Of course there are also bigger initiatives that are discussed within the energy saving policy.
Are students expected to implement
any of these measures?
In some cases they certainly are like for example, the computers that need to be turned off at the end of the lesson and the garage doors which need to be opened manually for us to get our P.E stuff, but the lights that go out when there is no movement in the classroom, is automatic so there is no way of having pupils be in influence of that, although there is still a switch so when the lights need to be switched off or no one is in the room anymore, people can still switch the light off to save even more energy.
Come up with at least three aspects that you think should
be included in the policy of the school to save energy
be included in the policy of the school to save energy
- Switch of the heating when the classroom is left, this makes sure that unnessecery heat isn't lost.
- Close the windows when the classroom is left, so it won't be very cold when the next class has a lesson there and the heating is put on.
- Put down the blinds when it’s warm outside, this prevents sunlight, and thus heat, to come inside through the window.
Explain 3 different methods that can be used to actively
save energy at school
1. Solar panels
Solar panels can be put on the roof of the school, this will generate energy, the amount of energy will change depending on the amount of sunshine there is on a particular day. Unfortunately we were not able to get a hold of the Blue print of the school, so an exact calculation of the amount of energy we can make isn't feasible. We do think however that installing just 30 panels can generate 7500 to 11250 Watts. Another idea that can help raise awareness is to add a sign in the cantine that displays weather conditions and energy production.
Formula: 'Amount of Panels' x 250 to 375.
2. Wind turbines
The Nehalennia buildings are located in the Netherlands, the Netherlands are notorious for hard hitting wind in the colder months of each year. Wind turbines could therefore be installed, these turbines will convert the energy of the wind into electricity which will save huge amount of money on the annual power bill. Asuming that we will only be installing one 2-MW turbine, the annual energy production could be
as high as 4,380,000 kWh.
Formula: 2 MW × 365 days × 24 hours × 25% = 4,380 MWh = 4,380,000 kWh
3. Better insulation
In the Nehalennia school we will often find that in our classrooms (mostly in winter) that the windows are wide open and the heating is blowing at its highest setting, which of course wastes a lot of energy, if one of these things would be fixed, the other one wouldn’t be necessary. When more people are aware of this less energy is going to be wasted. Now the exact amount of energy saved by this method is not to be calculated because it completely differs every day but what we do now is that it will save a lot.
The Nehalennia buildings are located in the Netherlands, the Netherlands are notorious for hard hitting wind in the colder months of each year. Wind turbines could therefore be installed, these turbines will convert the energy of the wind into electricity which will save huge amount of money on the annual power bill. Asuming that we will only be installing one 2-MW turbine, the annual energy production could be
as high as 4,380,000 kWh.
Formula: 2 MW × 365 days × 24 hours × 25% = 4,380 MWh = 4,380,000 kWh
3. Better insulation
In the Nehalennia school we will often find that in our classrooms (mostly in winter) that the windows are wide open and the heating is blowing at its highest setting, which of course wastes a lot of energy, if one of these things would be fixed, the other one wouldn’t be necessary. When more people are aware of this less energy is going to be wasted. Now the exact amount of energy saved by this method is not to be calculated because it completely differs every day but what we do now is that it will save a lot.
Interview with students
10 students aged 12 to 16 were asked about which energy saving measures of the school they know.
- Bobbi (14) - "There are sensors which switch of the lights in a classroom when there is no movement there."
- Lars (16) - "Sensors in the classrooms for the light usage and the printers are off during the holidays."
- Calvin (16) - "Closing the windows when it's cold so that no warmth is lost."
- Aimár (12) - "The heating is switched off during the summer and the windows are closed when it's cold."
- Jayden (13) - "The windows are closed when it's cold and there are sensors in the lights to switch them off when there's no movement."
- Yara (14) - "Sensors in the lights so they get switched off when there's no movement and closing the windows when it's cold outside."
- Mika (14) - "The computers are off when they aren't used and there are sensors in the lights."
- Eva (12) - No Idea, because she's new at this school.
- Fleur (12) - "There's a knob at the toilets which makes sure only a certain amount of water is used so no water is spilled and the lights turn off when there's no movement in that room."
- Sven (15) - "The windows are closed when it's cold outside and there are sensors in the lights so they get turned off when there's no movement."
(We didn't include pictures of the students because they wanted to stay anonymous, we could only use their names and ages)
Interview with the janitor
The janitor of our school was asked about the policy for saving energy at our school
We have asked our janitor some questions and the main thing we wanted to know was if there existed a policy for saving energy at our school.
"At our school we do have a policy for saving energy" he said. "For example the teachers are trying to make sure we are getting sensors in all the classrooms which switch off the lights when there is no movement. This is in some classrooms but not in all of them yet. Something our school already does is switching off the printers during the holidays which saves lots of energy".
Then he also told us some things about certain aspects we have at school that save energy. ‘ Toiletknob’ he mentioned, this is a knob which makes sure that a certain amount of water is used so no water is spilled. In our school there are many doors which are always closed so no heat gets lost.
Our conclusion from the interview was that at our school we are really working on how we can and should save energy. We want to improve and save money so we can do other things with it instead.
"At our school we do have a policy for saving energy" he said. "For example the teachers are trying to make sure we are getting sensors in all the classrooms which switch off the lights when there is no movement. This is in some classrooms but not in all of them yet. Something our school already does is switching off the printers during the holidays which saves lots of energy".
Then he also told us some things about certain aspects we have at school that save energy. ‘ Toiletknob’ he mentioned, this is a knob which makes sure that a certain amount of water is used so no water is spilled. In our school there are many doors which are always closed so no heat gets lost.
Our conclusion from the interview was that at our school we are really working on how we can and should save energy. We want to improve and save money so we can do other things with it instead.
Communication with Indian pupils
We have had two video conferences with the Indian pupils, of which one was just to get to know each other and to share our plan of action, and the other one to share a little bit of information, but hey sent the next group in very quick so we didn't really have a lot of information from them. We also tried to communicate via the Whatsapp group we had, but we don't think they really understood our questions because we asked them if they had any questions for us, but they answered with "okay, sure" and "Sure, thank you".
Awareness activity
Methods of saving energy can be brought to people's attention at school by hanging up posters or have projects which have as theme save energy. You can achieve each person's cooperation by making it fun and maybe have a reward for the best project or someting like that.
Comparison between 2 other groups
Comparison between energy management at school of nehalennia (us) and waste management at school of the Hirandan School.
When I went to the weebly page to investigate at their progression, I found out that they didn’t post any of their progress except a video and picture explaining who they are. Without this information I cannot compare and contrast this group although it is similar to our topic.
When I went to the weebly page to investigate at their progression, I found out that they didn’t post any of their progress except a video and picture explaining who they are. Without this information I cannot compare and contrast this group although it is similar to our topic.
Comparison between energy management at school of nehalennia (us) and energy management at home of nehalennia .
By looking at their weebly page I immediately noticed a few things that were similar: they started with a little slide show with some personal information. After that, they made an index just like us, after that they started with all their research. This layout is very clear and I think that’s why we (and some other groups) have it in common. Although their topic was almost the same I found some differences which have to do with the fact that they researched their homes and we researched the school. When looking past that factor the main and sub questions aren’t very different either. For example the first sub question is describe your school, their first question is describe your house, and more importantly our main question is “how can energy be saved at school in the most efficient way”. Their main one is “how can energy be saved at home in the most efficient way” which of course resembles a lot. Then again their way of showing research is very different than ours which is more than obvious because they are different people.
By looking at their weebly page I immediately noticed a few things that were similar: they started with a little slide show with some personal information. After that, they made an index just like us, after that they started with all their research. This layout is very clear and I think that’s why we (and some other groups) have it in common. Although their topic was almost the same I found some differences which have to do with the fact that they researched their homes and we researched the school. When looking past that factor the main and sub questions aren’t very different either. For example the first sub question is describe your school, their first question is describe your house, and more importantly our main question is “how can energy be saved at school in the most efficient way”. Their main one is “how can energy be saved at home in the most efficient way” which of course resembles a lot. Then again their way of showing research is very different than ours which is more than obvious because they are different people.
Group Reflection
The co-operation between the group was quite good, it wasn't perfect but we managed to agree with everything. We helped each other if it was needed and we assisted each other with everything to make it even better. There were of course some small complications, like at first a few people didn't like the lay-out of the page, but that's different now. We could have maybe started a little bit earlier with assigning the different subjects to the person from the group, but we made it in time. I think we were a great team although we didn't really know each other beforehand and we could've done a little bit better.
Recommendation for the school
Our recommendation for Nehalennia is to not only implement some of the things we have mentioned within our research, or to change the current policy to drastically improve it, but to also inform pupils that these changes are being made. By making the students aware of the energy management improvements at the Nehalennia, they themselves could reconsider how they behave at the school, this can in turn cause a positive effect on the atmosphere of the school.
Conclusion
Now that we had gathered all our data by using the research questions we could finally draw a conclusion, the just of this conclusion is that many things are already being done to save energy at school, but there can always be done more to save even more energy. As a result of this we have decided that a positive recommendation could help more than a final verdict.
Thank you for visiting our page!
Koen, Floris, Genaya & Tessa
Koen, Floris, Genaya & Tessa