With recent headlines threatening National Grid energy blackouts, rising energy prices and cost of living there’s never been a better time to look at your business and see where you can save energy and save money.
There are two ways you can cut back – energy conservation and energy efficiency.
Energy conservation means cutting down on energy use whereas energy efficiency use means using energy smarter.
A few simple tweaks to your premises and your behaviour can help you cut £££s off your energy bills as well as supporting the national effort to save energy this winter.
Here are six of the best from kinex:
1. Eliminate Vampire Power!
Taking a few moments to ensure you switch off your lights, computers and other equipment when you leave your premises at night can save you a lot of money in the long run.
Statistics show that if you leave your office lights on overnight, each year you use enough energy to heat a home for 5 months!
Turning off security and safety lights at the beginning of the day can also conserve electricity. A small business or department can save over £1,000 each year just by ensuring that lights are not left on overnight.
If you can, then repair or replace dysfunctional office equipment that could be consuming energy due to inefficient operation. For example, a laptop uses much less energy than a traditional desktop computer.
Using timer controls at key electricity points can also automatically help you control the energy supply if you should forget to switch off at the end of the day.
2. Install LED bulbs
Energy efficient lighting helps to lower electricity bills and carbon emissions. While the initial outlay will set you back, you’ll quickly recoup that investment in energy saved. Plus, LED bulbs last longer than traditional bulbs, so you’ll also save on maintenance costs.
You can save £2-3 per year for every traditional halogen bulb you switch to a similarly bright LED bulb or up to £7 per 100 watt incandescent bulb.
Also consider placing motion sensors in corridors, meeting rooms, bathrooms, storage facilities or other appropriate locations for automatic light control when people enter and exit these areas.
3. Get a smart meter
Having a smart meter means your bills will always reflect your actual usage.
This can help you to understand your energy usage and reduce waste, which is great both for your pocket and for the environment. On a national and global level these savings could amount to a significant reduction in overall carbon emissions, which can only be a good thing!
Businesses who have already taken up smart meters, some have recorded up 11% reductions in energy use, worth up to £135 a year on average.
If you’re a kinex customer, register your interest here and we’ll arrange to install the latest smart meter at your premises, free of charge.
4. Only boil the water you need
We all love a brew! But taking care over how much water you and your employees are heating up during a tea break can save you some serious energy.
If you boil more water than you need, then all that boiling water that isn’t used represents nothing but wasted energy and wasted money. Keeping boiled water in flasks is a good way of reusing that energy.
Research suggests that the average UK kettle boiler fills up their appliance with twice as much water as they need. Invest in a smaller kettle if you have fewer employers.
If everyone boiled only the water they needed every time they used the kettle, we could save enough electricity in a year to power the UK’s street lights for nearly seven months.
5. Take control of your heating
A significant percentage of the money we spend on energy in the UK goes on heating and hot water.
Many places of business are overly air-conditioned to the point of being too cold; turning down air-conditioning a few degrees is proven to be a money-saving trick that many companies can adopt. Use timers to turn off the air-con during out-of-office hours.
Simply turning down your room thermostat by just one degree can save around £55 a year and reduce your carbon footprint by 300kg – that’s equivalent to driving 754 miles in an average petrol car. If your premises are larger than average, you could save even more.
6. Draught-proof your premises
Unless you’re in brand-new premises, it’s likely that you’re losing heat through draughts around your doors, windows, gaps in the floor or even through your chimney! These draughts make heating your premises more expensive as more energy is required to replace the lost warm air.
You can spend money on professional draught proofing if you have larger premises with draughts, but there are a number of DIY solutions you can try yourself if you have a troublesome door or window that’s letting in cold air. Try a draught excluder on doors, fit flaps or brushes on letterboxes and use foam, metal or plastic draught strips on windows.
Knowledge is (reduced) power…
But one of the best ways to reduce your energy costs is by knowing how much energy your business is actually consuming with a smart meter.
Remember – if you’re a kinex customer, call us on 0161 465 6655 and we’ll arrange to install the latest smart meter at your premises, free of charge.
Visit the kinex dedicated smart meters page for more information.
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