Fifth-grade students at Lincoln Elementary School, Madison, WI have begun to study how the school uses electrical energy. In the course of their investigation that will hone science and math skills, they may help save the school money on its energy bills, too.

The innovative project is taking place in Clare Seguin’s classroom with the encouragement of school principal Beth Lehman. It is jointly supported by the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) and Informing Ecological Design, LLC of Madison, WI. The project uses “real-time” energy data obtained from the Madison Gas & Electric Company utility meter at the school.

“The Lincoln project is allowing us to test the idea that we can save 5 to 10% of electric energy costs if staff and students can see patterns in use and adjust building use appropriately,” said Doug Pearson, Director of Building Services at MMSD. “At the same time, the real-time energy data provide a rich source for classroom study of energy issues.”

The data flow to a personal computer equipped with software developed by Informing Ecological Design. The PC writes a cumulative record of energy use every 15 minutes. SenseDat Analyzer™ software lets staff and students view pictures and tables of energy. use that provokes questions. The software provokes questions and stimulates ideas for experiments to help the school use energy more wisely.

Here’s a recent example as students started the project.

The Analyzer software display shows the amount of electric energy (measured in kilowatt-hours, abbreviated kWh) used by Lincoln School on Tuesday 23 March 2004. You can see energy use every 15 minutes starting at midnight on Tuesday 23 March 2004 and ending at midnight on 24 March 2004. There are 96 points plotted, one for each quarter hour of the day. The graph shows the school building “waking up” at 6 a.m. and beginning to “go to sleep” at 6 p.m.

The graph provoked a question: “What happened around 10 a.m.?” (The time is marked by the arrow at the top of the graph.) After a little bit of thinking, the students proposed the dip in energy use might be connected to the assembly held Tuesday morning—maybe teachers turned off lights in the classrooms before classes came to the assembly? Seguin suggested that they might test this observation right away—the school would have an assembly Thursday afternoon and the students could try to get all the teachers to turn off lights in empty classrooms. Then they could look at the graph of energy use on Thursday and see if there was a similar dip.

On Thursday afternoon before the assembly, the school PA broadcast a reminder to turn off lights in classrooms. Clare checked the rooms, too. Here’s a graph of what happened on Thursday afternoon.

The yellow triangle indicates the start of Thursday’s experiment (the green triangle notes a system change Thursday where we shut off the data-logging to work on a network connection.)

The drop in energy use for the time of the assembly on Thursday is about 18% more than the corresponding dip on Tuesday. The students conclude that going to the assembly and making sure all the lights are off in empty classrooms affects the electricity use at the school

In the next few weeks, Seguin and her students will be asking more questions about where electricity comes from, what happens when fossil fuels are burned to create electricity and what the school can do to use energy more wisely.

Pearson sees the potential for education and energy savings through use of graphs and tables like those provided by SenseDat Analyzer™. Lincoln School building custodial staff as well as the teachers and students will use SenseDat Analyzer™ software to understand patterns in energy use and identify ways to use energy more wisely.

“Our initial work with students at Edgewood High School and Campus School (Madison, WI) has shown us that high school and middle school students can understand the graphs and tables produced by SenseDat Analyzer™, said Kevin Little, founder of Informing Ecological Design, LLC. “Clare’s students at Lincoln have wonderful enthusiasm. They ask great questions and can apply their science and math skills to understand energy use at their school. We are delighted with this opportunity to work with Madison Metropolitan School District.”