Complete the Energy Sparks enrolment form and nominate your school's Energy Sparks champion—typically a teacher, facilities manager, or school business manager. This person becomes the account administrator, coordinating pupil activities and receiving platform alerts. If your school doesn't have compatible smart meters, contact your energy supplier to request an upgrade to AMR or SMETS2 meters with half-hourly data access.

Energy Sparks will contact you to provide a letter of authority to give permission for Energy Sparks to access your energy data from your suppliers. You will then be invited to set up your school's Energy Sparks account where you can add more staff and pupil users. 

Join an initial training webinar to familiarise yourself with the platform features, including how to interpret energy charts, access tailored recommendations, and navigate the activity library. This foundation ensures your school can immediately begin identifying energy-saving opportunities.

Spend your first fortnight exploring your school's energy dashboards to understand current consumption patterns. Review when heating systems activate, identify your electricity baseload (power used when the school is empty), and examine weekend and holiday usage. The platform automatically highlights priority areas—common issues include heating starting too early, equipment left on overnight, or excessive energy use during the school holidays.

Share initial findings with your facilities team and senior leadership to build awareness. Use Energy Sparks' comparison tools to see how your school performs against similar institutions. Document any obvious problems you discover, such as heating running during half-term or computers staying on all weekend. This baseline understanding creates the foundation for targeted action and helps you communicate the potential for savings to your school community.

Establish a pupil eco-team or integrate Energy Sparks into existing curriculum time across multiple classes. Begin with the "Get Energised" programme, which introduces students to energy concepts and their school's energy data. Students log into the pupil dashboard to explore colour-coded charts showing daily electricity and gas consumption. Facilitate investigations where pupils identify when energy use spikes or remains unnecessarily high.

Popular starting activities include conducting a school energy audit, creating switch-off reminder posters, monitoring classroom temperatures, or investigating appliance energy use. Each completed activity earns points for the inter-school scoreboard, adding competitive motivation. Encourage students to present their findings in assemblies, creating whole-school awareness. Record all activities on the Energy Sparks platform to track progress and demonstrate engagement. The combination of real data, hands-on investigation, and visible impact sustains student enthusiasm whilst building analytical and presentation skills.

Review the customised energy-saving recommendations that Energy Sparks generates for your school based on your consumption data. These typically include behaviour changes (creating holiday switch-off checklists, establishing monitoring routines), heating adjustments (modifying start times, checking thermostat locations, reducing weekend heating), and operational changes (installing timers, upgrading to LED lighting, configuring automatic equipment shutdown).

Work collaboratively with your facilities team to test and implement changes—many require no capital investment. For example, adjusting heating to start at 6am instead of 4am might save thousands annually without affecting comfort. For recommendations requiring investment or approval, involve students in developing business cases. Track the impact of each change through the Energy Sparks dashboard—you'll see consumption adjust in real-time. Set up automated alerts to notify you if energy patterns revert, ensuring improvements stick. This systematic approach addresses both quick wins and deeper systemic issues.

Establish routines to maintain momentum beyond the initial enthusiasm. Schedule regular check-ins (monthly or termly) to review energy data with your eco-team and facilities staff. Subscribe to Energy Sparks newsletters for seasonal tips—winter focuses on heating waste, summer on lighting and equipment. Rotate pupil leadership within your eco-team to spread skills and maintain fresh perspectives. Share successes in school newsletters, at governing body meetings, and with parents to build community pride. Complete additional Energy Sparks activity programmes targeting specific challenges like "Watch Out for Heating Waste", or build deeper curriculum integration. 

Record your completed Energy Sparks activities and energy-saving actions on your Energy Sparks account to build a timeline of energy-saving interventions for your school, earn points on the Energy Sparks scoreboard, exchange ideas and learn from others' innovations.

As you achieve savings, reinvest some funds into further improvements like solar panels or better insulation, creating a positive cycle. Celebrate milestones—both financial savings and carbon reductions—to reinforce that student action creates measurable change.