Carpenter Hill Elementary Vampire March

By:

In an effort to reduce energy consumption, Carpenter Hill Elementary participates in what is called the Vampire March.  This involves turning off switches and unplugging everything that is not needed over a school holiday or break.  Teachers unplug their classrooms and office staff takes care of all other areas.  Thanks to our Eco-Kids group, our switchplates are decorated with a friendly reminder for our Carpenter Hill Colts to turn off the lights when they are not needed.

Here is our graph of electricity usage for Carpenter Hill.  The numbers on the vertical axis represent the heating and cooling used during annual kilowatt per square footage usage or kwh/sqft.  The horizontal axis represents the monthly kwh/sqft. usage.  The blue horizontal line represents the base line for electricity plugs and light loads.  Everything below the horizontal line is lights and everything we plug into an electical outlet.

Using these data sets, the yellow line is fiscal year 2012/2013.  This line dips below our plug and light load in December 2012 and continues through January 2013.  Our base line plug load for Carpenter Hill is .60 kwh/spft.  During the months of December and January, or during Vampire March, our vertical line was reduced to .44 kwh/sqft.  The difference in the horizontal and vertical line is our savings in kwh/sqft.  This equates to a reduction of .16 kwh/sqft. times the square footage of the building, or 95,308 sq/ft. for a total of 15, 249 kwh saved during this time period.  Our electricity cost is .095 cents per kilowatt hour or 1000 watts times one hour of operation.  Total savings during this time line is $1,448.  Based on this graph, we can say that the Vampire March was the leading cause of the reduction during the time period.  The dark blue line for 2010/2011, the first year Carpenter Hill opened, showed an anomaly and should be discounted.

The simple act of turning off light switches and unplugging electronics is an effective way to reduce energy consumption.  Not only does our school participate in the Vampire March, the other schools in our Hays County District also participate.  Just imagine how much we are saving as a district!