What are the benefits of monitoring use?
If you are not monitoring your consumption, you will not be able to know whether your energy and water management activities are having an effect.
By monitoring use, you will be able to clearly see whether your actions are making a difference and also quantify the savings, even if your energy costs have gone up! This is because the savings you make from reducing your consumption can be multiplied by the price the school pays for each unit of energy (usually kWh) to give you the additional cost you would have had to cover if you hadn’t made the savings.
Monitoring use also allows you to spot problems early on and take action to reduce their effects on your budgets or on all the hard work you are putting in. For example, an unexplained increase in consumption usually identifies a problem. If you wait for your bills to tell you this information it could be three months or more after the problem occurred before you even become aware of it. This can be very costly to your school budgets.
You can also compare your meter readings with your supplier’s billing information, allowing you to rectify any reading errors or submit actual readings instead of estimates which can reduce costs or at least ensure you pay as you use which will help with your cashflow.
How to get started - monitoring use
Find out where all of your meters are. In the case of oil, LPG, coal or wood deliveries; you may have to keep a record of your delivery date and amount if there is no direct way to measure consumption.
Use the monitoring tool on our website to record these readings. You will be asked some initial questions to help ‘benchmark’ your performance. Once these have been completed, simply enter your meter readings into the site every month. You will receive an email when your readings are due, along with a link for you to directly access the tool.
We will then provide you with immediate commentary on your consumption based on the information you have supplied, including any abnormal usage patterns and suggestions as to why this may be the case. You will also be able to view your data in graphical form helping you to see any usage trends. These can also be very good awareness raising tools and can be printed and used on school notice boards or electronic newsletters.
Resources to help you with this activity
- Find out about national benchmarks, how to use them and how well your school is performing. Download your Scheme Progress Booklet from this website and complete the exercises to help you achieve certification, compare your performance to benchmarks and set realistic reduction targets.
Where to get further information
The Carbon Trust’s free guide: A Whole School Approach (CTV037) provides some introductory information on monitoring consumption and benchmarking your school.
Supporting information on monitoring use will shortly be available and there will be a link inserted here for your convenience.
