Lessons In Lessening Energy Use
The Age
Monday August 1, 1994
While the task of teaching students the benefits of energy efficiency is usually limited to the classroom, students at Methodist Ladies' College in Kew are being forced to live out an energy-efficient lifestyle.
The school wanted to teach students more than what was contained in textbooks and decided to build a $5 million village campus in remote bushland near the Victoria-New South Wales border.
The site is surrounded by the Croajingalong National Park and posed a number of design problems because its isolation meant there was little likelihood of the SEC connecting power.
The school's principal, Mr David Loader, said the problems prompted a rethink that resulted in a unique design making the most of what nature has to offer.
``When we started thinking about building a village, we wanted to build a village that was modern in the sense that it had conveniences, but that was more sensitive to the environment," Mr Loader said.
The result was a complex that houses 90 students and teachers and uses the sun and wind to provide most of the power and a diesel generator for back-up energy supply.
Every available resource was used to make the campus energy efficient.
The houses face north and use large areas of glass to make the most of natural heating. One of the features of the buildings is the use of internal mud-brick walls to hold in heat.
Each house, accommodating eight students, was designed to use passive solar heating by locating the living areas on the sunny side of the building and the bedrooms away from the sun.
Cooking is done using LPG and water supply is from tanks and the nearby river. The students are required to cook their own meals, do their own laundry and clean and maintain their houses.
Gauges are located in each house to enable students to monitor and control how much energy they use. Competitions are held between houses to see which is the most energy efficient.
The back-up generator uses between 200 and 300 litres of fuel a week while a power system using diesel 24 hours a day would consume about 500 litres. The saving is estimated at more than $5000 a year.
Contact Gaye Hoogen at Energy Victoria on 6517179 or fax 651-7367 for details of The Age/Energy Victoria Energy Efficiency Awards. Details have been posted to all Victorian school principals. Information kits on energy efficiency are available from the Energy Information Centre on 6501195.
© 1994 The Age