Dave Dobbin - the technology teacher, mind you, not the musician - has earned a reputation among his students as a bit of an inventor.
Seven years ago he walked into his classroom and switched off all the lights, which were mostly on - as was the heater.
It was on for 24 hours a day, by accident.
Dave took a look at his school's power bill and found it was rather large - 450,000 kilowatt hours and $120,000 per annum.
"I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and went straight around to principal and said we're spending 12 to 16 thousand dollars a month!" Dave says.
So he put his students to work - installing a wind turbine and a mini hydro power station - the latter mainly for education purposes.
They also put insulated buildings and put in solar panels - 117 of them.
After everything was installed, the next phase was to include the special needs students - explaining to them exactly how everything worked.
Now, Dave's school is reaping the rewards - by his reckoning, they've saved about $206,000 in energy.
Dave has saved his school hundreds of thousands just by flicking switches at the end of the day.
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