Our team earned Runner Up and $500

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Of our team of 8 famillies, two of us reduced our energy use, one by 7% and one by 20% over the three month period, cmopared to that period the previous year. Our activities and results earned our school $500 and a runner-up title from America's Home Energy Challenge. Below is the narrative we submitted.

Team: TeamBrykerWoods

Grade: multiple grades ranging from 3^rd to 6^th

Leader: Robin Lance

School Representative: Amy Chamberlain

Teacher Volunteer: Matthew Nelson

Number of team members: 8

Our team  was initiated by PTA volunteers as an after-school program that met semi-monthly from October 2011 to mid-January 2012.  Eight students registered and completed the data collection challenge.

Since the challenge was not part of classroom assignments, our adult volunteers knew that we would need regular communication with families to be sure that they knew how to support their student in the Home Energy Challenge. To this end, the adult volunteer created a website with links for learning and connecting to the assignment: to create a checklist of action items that the can implement in the short term and in the long term.  Teambrykerwoods.weebly.com

We partnered with Austin Energy, our city-owned utility, to provide each family with printed information, outlet insulation templates, weatherstripping, and two Compact Fluorescent bulbs.  Austin Energy also provided us with a Kill-a-Watt energy meter for our Challenge families. Four families borrowed the Kill-a-Watt meter.

Our meetings were spent:

• learning about home energy use, how energy is made and the impact of our energy choices on the environment
• creating action plans in the form of action items
• forming a Watt Watchers patrol of the school. Using materials provided by the State Energy Conservation Office (SECO), we visited each classroom after school and left a “ticket” (see samples attached) that either congratulated the class on having lights/computers turned off when not in use or reminded the class to turn them off when not in use. At another meeting, the director of the SECO brought 8 infrared cameras to our school so that we could detect leaks and energy hogs around the school (see photos attached). They even discovered how warm-blooded mammals, like each other and the classroom rabbit, generate heat and challenge our Air Conditioners.

At our last meeting in January, we entered our home energy data online and found that the family that saved the most energy did so primarily by unplugging a second refrigerator that is kept on their screen porch. Other families saved smaller amounts by turning of the lights and taking other small actions. And still, other families did not save energy by not implementing their action plans.