Welcome to Green Schools, Bayview Education Centre!

Bayview Education Centre is located on the western coast of Cape Breton in the small town of Port Hood. Bayview just joined the Green Schools community this September and as their Engagement Officer, I’m excited to get to know staff and students this year.

Green Schools Program Coordinator Colleen Freake joined me for my first visit to Bayview on October 20th. The first thing we noticed when we entered the school was the friendly attitude of the students who greeted us and helped us find the right classrooms. Many students were curious about our presentation and wanted to know why we were carrying around lamps and mini lights!

Grade five and six students were keen to use an energy meter to test the energy consumption of many different items including a strand of large incandescent Christmas lights and a strand of large LED Christmas lights. The students discovered that a strand of 25 incandescent bulbs uses 169 watts while a strand of 50 LED bulbs only uses 2 watts!

I asked the students which bulbs I should use on my house this year. It takes either 10 incandescent strands or 5 LED strands to go around my roof. At my house, we put lights up on December 1st and takes them down on December 31st. The lights are on a timer that keeps them on for 5 hrs/day. We know that in Nova Scotia we pay $0.15/kWh. This is what we found:

Incandescent lights:
169W x 10 strands= 1690W (1.69kW)
1.69kW x 5 hrs x 31 days= 261.95kWh
261.95kWh x $0.15/kWh= $39.29

LED lights:
2W x 5 strands= 10W (0.01kW)
0.01kW x 5 hrs x 31 days= 1.55kWh
1.55kWh x $0.15= $0.23

Wow! Students were amazed that in my case, I will save $39.06 on my power bill by switching to LED Christmas lights. For a similar activity for grades 6-8, see our Light Bulb Comparison Activity.

At the end of the day, the staff and students at Bayview said goodbye to their Green Schools visitors. We had a great day, and I’m excited to work with Bayview this year as staff and students discover more ways to save energy at home and at school. Let’s save energy and help the Earth!

-Shandel Brown
Engagement Officer, Cape Breton