Be it a grade school or college campus, we cannot imagine it running without electricity. Schools usually stay active for 8-10 hours a day, and this leads to a lot more energy consumption than an average household. Public buildings that are catering to a large number of people at the same time requires a lot of uninterrupted energy supply to keep their operations running.
The question, how to save energy at school appears to be a simple one, but the answer is complicated. When you are running a school, the priority is to facilitate faculty and students in every possible way. From setting up your mic to a single light, everything consumes electricity. Teachers often get instructions to make efforts to save energy to cut down the expense. Although the electricity expense is unavoidable, efforts are always made by the management to save some amount.
Every energy source consumption has some legal protocols that are mandatory to fulfill for smooth operations. It is necessary to follow the rules and allotted amount of energy by concerned organizations. Schools fall under the public building category. There is legal documentation for energy consumption that is required to be visible at every public building. These public buildings should have display energy certificates 250m2 .
These DECs are easy to attain by following a professional assessment that shows the energy performance of the building. DEC lasts for a year; often, these DECs are accompanied by a legal advisory document which h holds recommendations and suggestions.
Let us see what measures we can take to save energy at school.
1. Get the best sunlight
Schools are ideal to be built or bought near the vicinities that are facing the direction of the sun. Since schools are usually functional in the morning till day hours, you can reduce the consumption of electricity by availing much of sunlight.relying on sunlight will save the energy by not switching on the lights, and you will only have to run fans.
Keeping all the unnecessary lights off will also make your building cooler in severe hot temperatures. Natural sunlight can also help increase the focus of students as they don’t penetrate our eyes. The overhead sharp artificial lights make it difficult for students to focus on board as well.
2. Switch to LEDs
You might have noticed that yellow lights generate not only a lot of heat, but it also consumes a lot of electricity. If your school building has yellow lights, it is better to switch to LED lights. LEDs can reduce the consumption of electricity and reduce the cost of your electricity bills. LEDs can reduce the price up to 75% as they are cost-effective and provides sufficient energy with minimal dissipation of heat.
3. Occupancy Sensors
With the advancement in technology, we can now save us the efforts of turning the lights on our own and at random places. Occupancy sensors are indoor motion sensors that automatically detect the presence of a person and controls the lights and temperature places. Often students forget to turn off the lights while leaving their classrooms. Occupancy sensors can monitor light usage and will provide a view in the areas where they are needed.
4. Replace televisions with flat screens or LCD
LEDs are not the only source to help you fix the excessive energy consumption. If your school is still possessing the old-time tv, no matter if you have LEDs installed, this television will equalize energy consumption as it is not going to reduce it for you. Replacing televisions with LCDs will improve not only screen quality, but it will also use less energy than your traditional T.V.
5. Invest in a better cooling system
Facing hot temperatures and thinking to equip your building with tons of air conditioners? This thought might be soothing, but it is going to increase your energy consumption ten times and hence the billings. Instead of spending money on buying air conditioners with massive energy consumption, it is wise to assess the insulation of your walls, ceilings and also check the functionality of your windows. Better insulation will stop the outside heat from penetration into your building, and windows will help you eliminate the inside temperature out to the environment.
Conclusion
Schools are public buildings that accommodate hundreds of students, staff, and administrative faculty. A large group of people also require a lot of resources, including electricity and water. Students and teachers spend almost 8-10 hours with continuous use of power, which ultimately leads to excessive consumption and high costs. This makes it important to consider ways to reduce such costs and look at plans that can get you the lowest prices in your school area. Let’s say your school is in El Paso, Texas, and you pay too much on your electric bills, you would want to consider the best electric company in El Paso by comparing all the electricity providers in the area.
By taking small precautionary measures, we can manage to reduce the extra load and save energy for the betterment of our environment.
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