Riverview takes the lead...............

The school is the first Australian user of innovative software that uses smart metering to track, manage and
report on energy use.

Developed by TR Control Solutions in Britain, the software, called ecoDriver, aims to educate young minds
in energy consciousness.

It uses live data reflecting usage and respective costs of electricity, gas and water, displayed on LCD
monitors in user-friendly line and bar graphs, to allow schools to track behavioural patterns and their
effect on its carbon footprint.

A series of lesson plans has been developed to facilitate integration of data analysis into the curriculum.
Administrators are also informed on how energy and money can be saved.

St Ignatius College Riverview head master Shane Hogan said ecoDriver was adopted after a group of
students saw the software in use at an eco-school during a visit to Britain last year.

"The kids are now seeing change on a day-to-day basis and an hour-to-hour basis and it is creating
curiosity," Mr Hogan said.

"In the evening, the power being generated at school still seems to be very high, so the kids are asking what
sort of things haven't been turned off when they are not at school."

The data is made available to all staff and is expected to be extended next year through various curricula.
"I'm sure physics and maths, for example, will pick it up very quickly," Mr Hogan said.

''If the students can see visually that if they do something and there is a change, they will be encouraged to
do more in the future."

TR Control Solutions chief executive Robert Battye said ecoDriver, released last year, had enabled one
British school to achieve a 44 per cent reduction in kilowatt hours.

An ecoDriver blog has been designed to promote global co-operation by allowing users to exchange energy
conservation tips.

TR Control Solutions focuses on sustainability and emissions management, and process control in
industrial gases and telemetry. It has developed ecoDriver for use by schools and commercial
organisations.

"As people look at the LCD, they can see how they are doing against a particular target and how much have
they have reduced versus last week," Mr Battye said.
"The idea is to engage them when looking at that to make changes."

A new managed service version of the ecoDriver software is to be released in September and is expected to
start from $250 per month for a school.

In a future version, we are going to use the web to allow people to interrogate each others progress against
targets and find out what projects and tips were most effective in achieving them," Mr Battye said.

The ecoDriver software was the first recipient of Microsoft's Platinum Ingenuity Point Award.