Monitoring

There are lots of ways to monitor consumption across the school/business depending on what areas you are focusing on.

The Using Less Stuff Company have a range of products to help support you with monitoring from a state-of-the-art monitoring meters with interactive software to simple and easy solutions like timers for shower usage or reminder tags for plugs and electronic equipment.

Once you have analysed your consumption and spend data from your suppliers and agreed on your focus group you need to decide how you will monitor your ongoing consumption.

As part of signing up to the ULS Behaviour Change Programme will you have been provided with a minimum of one monitoring meter and access to some highly interactive and useful software.  The meters supplied are for electricity monitoring, we can also provide meters for water and gas at an additional cost.  Please go back through your ULS Chair or bursar if you would like to look into the costs of additional meters to support your projects.

The Monitoring Meters – these are additional meters that are wired into your supplies, they track and record all consumption on the supply they are fitted to.  They can be used on Electricity, Gas and Water.  

Manually – Identify a few members of the class, eco-committee or volunteers who can check and record the meters on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.  Or on occasion maybe hourly through out the school day.

Energy Companies – Ask your energy providers to provide you with your consumption and spend data.  Its important here however to be providing regularly and accurate meter readings to your energy provider, as estimates are just that and they will not help you understand your true usage. Also remember if you have a half hourly meter, your supplier will be able to provide you with some very detailed reporting, so be specific about what you would like reporting back to you.