St Louis Community School make significant energy savings

Background

St Louis Community School, in Kiltimagh, Co. Mayo, set about addressing their energy use with the assistance of an energy assessment from SEAI. This was provided through the Energy in Education programme.

The Energy in Education programme offers a range of supports to help schools to improve energy management practices, reduce operating costs and protect the environment.

They discovered that over a quarter of the electricity consumption was happening at night. By implementing a range of energy saving measures, and consistently applying a switch off policy to ensure that energy is not being wasted, the school have successfully driven down their energy costs and continue to make significant savings.

The project

A series of energy saving opportunities were identified by the SEAI Energy Advisor during the school site assessment as follows:

• Implement a switch-off policy so electricity use was kept to a minimum when the school was closed 
• Increase insulation in the attic space and insulated large distribution pipe work
• Reduce the time during which the air handling unit for the gym is in use by 50%
• Employed remote switch off of computers after a set time of inactivity
• Install a 7 day timer on the immersion heater in the kitchen 
• Set the extraction fan to minimum as the default setting
• Avoid the practice of having heating on and windows open
• Turned off/down radiators in rooms prone to overheating

Results and key achievements

• €6,365 saved on electricity bills
• 12,300 night time units saved
• 8,000 litres of heating oil saved

Get involved

The Energy in Education programme offers a range of supports to help schools to improve energy management practices, reduce operating costs and protect the environment.

Sign up for a free training course to find out how you could save money by better managing your school’s energy use.