Growing your business means that you’ll have to anticipate the increase in expenditures, too. This is a fact with utilities. As enterprises gain momentum and, thus, increase in their operations, energy consumption follows suit.
While you learn about the importance of Half hourly meters and their other conventional alternatives, energy deals, and more, there are 5 steps you can use as a guide for reducing business energy consumption and costs.
How To Reduce Business Costs
1. The Audit
Whether your business is fresh off the boat or has been around for ages past, it is always advantageous to have your establishment go through a professional energy audit. It’s a good starting point, as this will determine the rest of what you should practice, with regards to energy-efficiency.
An energy audit will tell you just how much energy your business establishment consumes, and whether the numbers are higher or lower than what’s recommended for your building/s’ size and setting (number of electrical appliances and types, number of persons in your workforce, location, etc.).
It’s also an approach towards checking which devices are malfunctioning, and thus, using up electricity beyond what they should.
2. Peak Demand Reduction
Before observing this, first research what your locale’s peak demand hours are. “Peak demand” speaks of the specific and scheduled hours within a day when the usage of electricity is at its highest.
Often, these are allotted during “office hours”, with a general timeframe starting from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Now, it’s understandable that as a business, this very timeframe is when operations are up and at ‘em. Still, there are ways you can practice energy-saving by pointing out which appliances are most energy-wasteful (and which ones are not), via the audit.
Peak demand is usually designated per location. You may ask your auditor about this or get in touch with your local government office for a quick briefing of these crucial pieces of information.
3. Thermostat Monitoring
This one’s a more hands-on, practical tip— adjusting the thermostat in your business establishment. For a workplace that runs from 8+ hours each day, it will bring significant changes to your electricity bill every end of the month.
Create a schedule wherein you plot the hours within the day when workers are present and are working within the workplace. For businesses that have customers entering your shop, office, or store, plot hours when you and your staff entertain said customers the most.
Align these with the information regarding schedules that see the least number of customers, and when the staff are out on business errand runs (i.e. transportation, deliveries, out-of-office meetings, etc.). These are what you need to watch out for.
When there are less-to-no people in the space, you can lower the thermostat temperature. This will reduce energy consumption by the mile. And if you have a smart and/or programmable thermostat, this will be all the more convenient to do.
4. Energy-Saving Light Bulbs
Maybe it’s time to replace your older light bulbs with ones that are tailored to work with fewer voltages, and yet still emit light equal to (or as in most of these innovative products, better) that of their conventional counterparts.
LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) and CFLs (Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs) are great choices. They’re economical, too!
***Talk to your energy dealer and ask about other tips and recommendations for efficient energy usage for your enterprise.