Investing in Our Future: Making a Difference, One Light Bulb at a Time Helping the planet . . . Saving money . . . with energy efficient light bulbs

Prodigy Team Red Group: On A Mission to Make Crossett Brook a Greener Place!

Identifying The Problem

Inspiration As a part of a unit on our new solar panels and renewable energy, we calculated the school’s energy consumption in kilowatt hours. Seth, from VEEP, also came in and taught us about energy efficiency & compact fluorescent light bulbs

Stopping Climate Change We also learned in class that though climate change is a large scale issue, every little thing we do can make a difference.

Coming to Consensus As a class we brainstormed a list of things we could do to make CBMS a greener place. Together we decided that a lighting retrofit would make the biggest impact. We realized that we could switch out inefficient light bulbs in our school and save money as well as CO2 emissions. This helps the climate and our school so we have a better future.

We investigated which lights in the school were inefficient and found our commons area, office and gym lights consumed the most energy. We hoped to change these inefficient lights so that we could reduce the cost of our energy use as well as our greenhouse gas emissions.

Community Partner # 1 We invited our maintenance director, Bud, into our class to help us identify the wattage of the current light bulbs in the gym, commons area and office. We also asked about more efficient replacement possibilities.

Gym Lights The gym lights that we currently use at Crossett Brook are inefficient metal halides which consume 452 Watts per fixture. We found that we could replace these lights with fluorescent lights that consume only 232 Watts per fixture. In addition, these lights would be installed with motion sensors to further reduce energy consumption.

Commons Area and Office Lights The commons area and office lights that we currently use at Crossett Brook are also metal halide sconces which consume 295 Watts per fixture. We found out that we could replace these lights with fluorescent lights that use only 111 Watts per fixture.

We Needed More Help!: Community Partners #2 & #3 As we saw during our unit on renewable energy and solar power that our friend Seth from the VT Energy Education Program, knew a lot about energy efficiency. We also knew that he worked closely with Efficiency Vermont, an organization that gives incentives for projects like ours.

A Match Made in Heaven! Seth from VEEP helped us a TON! He came into our science class several times to help with calculations and our presentation. He also helped to facilitate the application process for the retrofit incentives through Efficiency Vermont. VEEP Vermont Energy Education Program

Next Step: Convincing the Board! In order to secure the necessary funding for our project we had to convince the district maintenance board that the investment was a worthy one. We put together a power point presentation with all the relevant data. Five of the students from our class presented our project to the board on January 28th.

Presenting to the Maintenance Board

A Summary of Our Lighting Retrofit Project: Energy We Will Save This graph shows the electric consumption of the two gyms, the commons areas, and the office per year. Energy consumption drops from 83,090kWh to 34,093kWh.

Money We Will Save This graph shows that by switching to more energy efficient lights, the school could save over $6,000 dollars every year!

Savings Beyond our Pockets: Greenhouse Gas Emissions and our Planet According to Efficiency Vermont, for every kWh that CBMS does not consume, 1.3 pounds of CO2 will not go into the atmosphere.

Climate Change: Making a Difference Replacing the gym, office and commons area lights will reduce CBMS emissions of carbon dioxide by 64,000 pounds every year!

Show Me The Money! Gym Commons + Office Combined Install Cost $11,115 $11,082 $22,197 Efficiency VT Incentives $5,850 $4,435 $10,285 KIDS Grant N/A $1,500 LEAP Grant $2,250 Net Cost $5,265 $4,457 $8,162 Savings($/yr.) $2,346 $4,108 $6,454 Payback (yrs.) 2.24 1.08 1.25

Project Approval! We were informed on March 4th that our project was approved by the board! The proposal is currently out for bid. Our new lights could be installed as soon as April break!

Celebrate! We have recently been informed that Waterbury LEAP (local energy action partnership), one of our community partners, will be awarding our group a $100.00 award for our “green” community project. We voted to use the money to have a yummy ice cream party as a celebration of our success!

Our Community Partners! Need picture of Bud VEEP Vermont Energy Education Program Bud Towndrow Maintenance Director CBMS Seth Rocks! We couldn’t have done it without them! 

Thank You! Questions or Comments?

A Parting Message: "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." - Dr. Seuss, from The Lorax