Dorset

Electricity baseload is the electricity needed to provide power to appliances that keep running at all times. It can be the fastest way of reducing a school's energy costs and reducing its carbon footprint.

These figures represent a comparison of school baseload over the last 12 months against the best performing schools.

Understanding how a school's energy use matches up with other schools of a similar size and how much energy could be saved each year is a good place to start.

These savings are based on comparing electricity usage over the last 12 months against the best performing schools.

Electricity use varies at different times of the day. Usage will be at a peak in the middle of the day, but should be low overnight.

These figures represent a comparison of usage at peak times against the best performing schools.

Out of hours electricity use is the amount of electricity used when the school is closed - overnight, at weekends and during the holidays. Reducing out of hours electricity use is one of the easiest, and cheapest ways of saving lots of energy.

These figures are based on a comparison of electricity usage outside of school hours against the best performing schools. Ensuring that school opening hours are up to date will improve the accuracy of the analysis.

Even the best performing schools can reduce energy usage by turning down the heating.

Getting the heating control right for your schools can save money and carbon very quickly as well as improving the learning environment for students.

A building with good thermostatic control means that the colder it is outside the higher the gas consumption for heating.

These savings are based on improving the thermostatic control in schools, to use less gas when the weather is warmer. This could be by checking thermostats or configuring weather compensation settings on boilers.