Case Studies

Simon Balle School, Hertford

When everyone has gone home, how can you identify waste?

Two weeks after commissioning of the Optimal system, it became apparent that night time electricity and water consumption was high.

The school requested that we fit a sub-meter to the swimming pool's water supply in order to monitor the consumption independently of the main supply. Our own qualified engineers were able to fit the sub-meter quickly and enable monitoring within seven days, as opposed to an average of 45 days from the utility suppliers. This enabled the school to eliminate pool consumption from the main supply data, subsequently identifying that they had a problem with urinals flushing too frequently.

At the beginning of the last summer term holiday, we revisited the school and spent a few days with the Facilities Manager and Site Manager identifying all electrical items that could be switched off at night 365 days per year. This investigative consultancy work achieved a 36% reduction in night time electricity consumption at the school, generating savings of several £1000s a year. The school achieved payback on its initial investment in our system in approximately 5 months.

The Head Teacher was so keen that all teachers understood the importance of controlling night time electricity consumption that she asked for us to conduct a demonstration of the system to all teachers in the school's lecture theatre. We did this, and as a result, the school intends to install further sub-meters in order to create localised departmental responsibility for electricity consumption in different parts of the school.

The flexibility of Optimal’s wireless data logger means that up to 64 different points can be monitored from one data logger.

The school has also begun to implement awareness courses for the students and has consequently asked to us to provide a number of student login accounts to their system.

All onsite meetings, presentations and investigative work has been provided to the school at minimal cost. As a result of our investment in time at Simon Balle School, many more people - both teachers and students - have understood the benefits of the system and have bought into its use and future potential by planning the expansion of monitoring within the school. This level of enthusiasm about the system would not have been achieved if Optimal had not invested the necessary time in the people at Simon Balle School.