Students from Sydney region high schools have helped cut their school energy bills by up to one-third in an environmental challenge held last term.

The “Beyond Earth Hour Challenge” requir-ed the 21 participating schools to reduce their electricity consumption over one month using cleverly designed energy efficiency strategies.

The winning school, Canterbury Boys High School, achieved a whopping 33.5 per cent average reduction in its energy consumption and sliced almost $500 off its electricity bill.

The energy consumption reduction average for all schools was 21.2 per cent

Paulene Dowd, principal of the Observatory Hill Environmental Education Centre (EEC), says the project allowed school communities to look at their own electricity consumption and work on improving their position.

“The most powerful learning outcome was the integration of technology and student leadership and the overall contribution to ecological sustainability,” Ms Dowd says.

As part of the project, the electricity supplier EnergyAustralia provided students with remote access to link into a webgraph, which enabled them to monitor in real time their school’s daily energy consumption data.

“They see energy consumption going down on the web graph, they know that their actions are reducing carbon emissions and the attractive thing for everyone is that the school is in a position to save funds,” Ms Dowd says.

Observatory Hill EEC is developing a learning resource based around the use of EnergyAustralia’s energy consumption webgraph and will be available to schools serviced by the company’s grid.