How to Cut Down Energy Costs for Your Business?

A business owner can offer its products to its customers at competitive prices only when the manufacturing, processing, and, most importantly, energy costs are less or at par with its competitors.

Smart entrepreneurs know the advantage of minimizing operational costs if they want to run their business in a globally competitive market.

In the age of technology, a business owner needs to be on toes all the time and should have some tricks and techniques up their sleeve that can save them extra operational costs. 

International relations amongst the countries and government policies are changing and sometimes make it impossible to cope with the drastic changes it brings to the marketplace.

This article will guide you to a few simple techniques you can use to cut down your business’s energy costs.

Cutting down your energy costs will help you save a considerable amount of money in the long run. Follow the guidelines, and you can thank us later as you cut down on your energy costs.

1. Find the sinks

There are a lot of ways you end up wasting energy.

Next time you give a call to some electrician or engineer that can look into the more technical side and offer you expensive products to save energy, better have a walk around your entire office by yourself. 

Self-assessment is a crucial step when you want to find the sinks where you are losing energy. 

An extensive energy assessment by yourself will help you find energy sinks without you having to pay for extra to an electrician.

It may sound like a lot of work, but all it needs is a little time and effort and a notepad where you should note down everything that is amounting to a waste of energy.

How to recognize energy sinks?

Recognizing an energy sink is easy. Walk throughout your office and note down the areas where you see obvious power sinks.

These sinks can be the areas that you see but ignore every day.

• Digital devices that are connected to power sources consume power continuously. Turn them off if you don’t need it regularly or are not meant to be used continuously for 24 hours.

• Identify old equipment that could be consuming more energy than it should. These old machines can contribute to a high amount of power bills even if you use them judiciously.

• Highly efficient LED bulbs and equipment with good energy ratings can save energy to a great extent in the long run. 

• You can also minimize peak demand, i.e., the number of hours that consume maximum energy. Peak hours generally fall between 9 am to 5 pm. If you can somehow adjust your maximum working during the early morning or late in the evening, you can conserve energy during the day. It will limit the heavy consumption to only a few hours.

The U.S Energy Administration states that lighting accounts for 10 percent of all the electricity consumption for commercial infrastructures. So, investment in a better light system can contribute to minimizing the overall energy costs.

• Another way you can cut your energy is if you can use natural lighting and create ventilation well within the structure of your building. Using windows and ventilation systems will allow you to cut back on the cooling or heating systems that you would otherwise invest in.

•  Windows can bring in natural light, allowing you to keep your lights off during the day time. Also, proper ventilation will reduce the pressure on other energy-consuming air circulation and regulation systems.

These techniques may seem a bit cumbersome initially but will form the base of cost-effective infrastructure.

2. Smart infrastructure

Going entirely green is not a workable option for most of the businesses.

However, being eco-friendly doesn’t always mean installing solar panels or wind energy towers. Some everyday fixes can quickly help you reinforce the entire energy system. 

Apart from this, you can create a smart office based on a cloud computing system. Some familiarity with technology can help you save a lot of energy.

Interconnecting your gadgets and office equipment with a cloud computing system will allow you to run your business even when you are not available. 

However, if you are not familiar with the technology and technicalities of cloud computing, hiring a professional or an agency that deals with energy-saving systems can save you a lot of money on power bills.

“Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have designed a model that shows the efficiency of the cloud in saving energy. The report reveals that 87 percent of reductions in energy cost can be done if businesses use cloud software.”

However, the model can’t be expected to be 100 percent accurate. The potential of cloud-based software seems to be the future of businesses and will have a significant impact on improving the efficiency of power consumption.

While cloud computing may not have picked up the pace yet, a business owner needs to keep tabs on its increasing importance.

3. Optimizing warehouses

Even if you are a small business with a small warehouse, opting for energy optimization strategies for warehouses is extremely important. 

• Replace traditional high-pressure sodium lamps and metal halides with warehouse lighting retrofit and lighting control systems.

• Installation of daylight sensors.

• Keep track of energy consumption with automated maintenance systems.

• Again, lighting amounts to 60 percent of energy consumption; hence, using energy-efficient light bulbs is the best way to go.

Conclusion: Cutting down energy costs for your business

In an era where everything runs the pace of a click, business owners need to save as much as they can.

Maintaining the quality of their infrastructure is as important as maintaining the standard of their products. Following the above techniques may not seem like something dramatic. 

These little steps can shape the future for your business and will help you go a long way. These steps are important for both startups who are looking to save and cut down their operational costs. 

Also, the big enterprises that have accumulated big energy bills and want to reconsider their strategy can benefit from it greatly. While some steps will offer instant payback, others will take some time to show on your last balance sheet.

References

https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1171159 – The Energy Efficiency Potential of Cloud-Based Software: U.S. Case Study.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=99&t=3 – How much electricity is used for lighting in the United States?”