Chailey saving energy

Albert Pullinger powering up the lightbulbs

 Mrs Hutchinson writes:

OVESCO Ltd came to Chailey School to do an assembly to our Year 8 and Year 9 students about saving energy and the PV panels that they erected on the school roof during the summer.  Students watched a six-minute video made by Cambridge University on how many equivalent lightbulbs (running 24 hours) are used by every person in the UK.

1 hot bath - 5 lightbulbs

Heating and Hot water in an average house  - 40 lightbulbs

Transport, driving 50 kms - 40 lightbulbs

On average each person is using the equivalent of 125 lightbulbs.

Two students, Lydia Hicks and Albert Pullinger, then took turns on a bicycle attached to some lightbulbs to show how much energy it would take to get 200 kilowatts of electricity.  Both managed 180 kilowatts and they had to cycle really fast!

In the UK 90% of our energy still comes from fossil fuels and so to replace that we would need to build 3000 nuclear power stations or 600,000 wind turbines.

Chailey School’s PV panels save us £2,400 per year on the energy bill and save 1100 tonnes of carbon emissions.  We have 14 Eco prefects and they are always working hard to think of ideas to save energy around our school BUT we can always do more:

Use less paper

Turn off computers and lights when not in classrooms

Re-use the same water bottle

Close doors and windows to keep the heat in

Thank you Chris and Nick from OVESCO for a really interesting assembly.