5 Solutions to Significantly Reducing Your Business’ Energy Bills
“Small businesses in America spend more than $60 billion a year on energy” How to Reduce Your Business’ Energy Costs
“Small businesses in America spend more than $60 billion a year on energy” How to Reduce Your Business’ Energy Costs
If you landed on this page through a Google search, let me start off by saying that in this article, you won’t read about the usual “turn off that lights when you’re not in a room” advice that you’re likely to find in most blogs about How to Reduce Your Electric Bills.
Don’t get me wrong, things like setting your thermostat, and using power strips to manage office vampire equipment are all ways to cut down on your electricity use and consequently, your reduce your electric bill.
In this article, I’m going to focus on core solutions that will impact your entire business. Energy-saving solutions that once in place will realize significant reductions in both energy usage and costs.
And while I can’t promise that every time you walk by an empty conference room you won’t stop to turn off the lights, I can say that any one of these solutions will work to significantly drive down your energy bills, and many also have sustainable benefits.
One of the keys to financial success is keeping a balanced and predictable budget.
If you’re spending more than 10% of your business’ operational budget on energy, then you should consider one of the solutions I’m about to cover.
I understand, running a business can present a lot of challenges and “how to reduce my energy bills” is not always on the top of your mind.
Because you can’t run a business without power, your energy bills become something you “just pay every month”.
If it’s lower than usual it’s a pleasant surprise; if it’s high, well, you shrug, maybe you get annoyed but either way, the bills get paid!
You’d be surprised as the amount of business owners I’ve met over the years that don’t know how much their business spends on energy because their bills are either on autopay, or they get handled by a CFO or the accounts department.
If I could impart one single piece of information to you with this blog it would be this:
YOUR ELECTRIC BILL IS SOMETHING YOU CAN CONTROL, AND WHEN YOU DO, IT WILL HELP YOU TO BECOME MORE PROFITABLE.
So now, let’s take a minute to discuss some larger-scale energy saving solutions you can implement in your business:
1) Finding Lower Energy Rates
If your business is located in a deregulated state one of the fastest ways to reduce and better control your energy bills is to find lower energy rates and secure them with a fixed-rate energy plan.
2) Utility Cost Recovery
“In a single year, public utility companies have over-billed their customers $19 BILLION dollars!” – U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee.
About 80% of the bills that our Professional Energy Managers review have some kind of error in them.
Last year, we helped a super-market save $40,000 on their electric bill just by noticing that their utility company had them in the wrong rate class!
Utility cost recovery finds errors in your bills, helps fix them and helps get your refunds for errors found, and by fixing them also lowers your future bills.
3) LED lighting
LED lights use 75% less energy than conventional lights.
The simplest way to take advantage of LED lighting is to go buy a bunch of LED lights and replace your existing bulbs. But remember, this article wasn’t going to cover any of the usual things you’ll read about online. So, to maximize your returns, it’s better to get what we call a LED Lighting Retrofit!
An LED lighting retrofit will optimize the lighting rigs, their placement, and utilize the latest technology, including light sensors. Newer designs also help you use fewer bulbs while improving lighting.
LED lighting retrofits have can have a significant impact on lower your energy bills.
4) HVAC New Life
What is HVAC New Life?
Most business spend most of their energy budgets on lighting and HVAC.
If your HVAC units are older than 10 years, there’s a big chance that they are literally consuming more than double the energy they should be.
I recall a huge building our team inspected in Dallas, Texas last year. The building manager heard constant complaints about it being too hot, despite the air conditioner being set. Upon inspecting their 18 HVAC units, we found that 9 of them were completely non-functional.
Not only did this cause problems in their cooling and air flow, it also overworked the remaining 8 units which spiked their energy costs.
Our HVAC new life service is a very thorough process that restores your entire HAVC system to like-new condition and extends its life, for fraction of what it would cost to buy a new HVAC unit.
Customers have routinely experienced a 45% increase in clean airflow while seeing a serious reduction in their energy costs.
5) Behind the Meter Generation
If you’ve been in business for a while, you may have noticed that you pay more for energy then you used to.
That’s because every year electricity rates go up!
Well guess what, you don’t HAVE TO buy your electricity from the local grid.
With behind-the-meter generation such as natural gas generators, or solar power, you can generate your own electricity!
In fact, depending on how much energy you use, having behind the meter generation can actually earn you money back from your local utility through what’s called a demand response program.
Behind the meter generation also provides protection from power outages and rolling blackouts, which are becoming more and more common.
Well, there you have it! 5 solutions that can help you drastically reduce your company’s energy bills.
I hope that you found this article helpful and informative.
James Lightning
Senior Editor, Energy Professionals
info@energyprofessionals.com
(844) 674-5465
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