An energy audit is just for big businesses, right? Wrong! It doesn’t matter what size your business is, if you’re using more energy than you need, then you’re wasting money.
Quite often, a business will associate high energy costs with an unfavourably high tariff. Effective energy expenditure control is not just about renegotiating utility bills (although it’s a great place to start!). There are other ways in which you can actively reduce your energy consumption, lower your annual bills and improve your carbon footprint.
As part of your energy switch, it’s always useful to carry out a full audit of your premises to identify where you are overspending on your energy. You’ll have to invest some time or money to conduct a full audit, but the results will be worth it in the long term.
What is an Energy Audit?
Carried out by experts, an energy audit involves a comprehensive analysis of your premises, indicating how efficient your current practices are and where you can reduce energy consumption and lower costs. Its insight into energy efficiency and conservation can lead to significant savings on your monthly bills.
From a personal point of view, we typically see savings of around 10%-20%, even reaching as high as 40% for some industrial clients or businesses with no history of energy management.
How will my business benefit?
What impact the audit will have on your business completely depends on your current energy management practices and the actions you’ve taken historically.
Conducting an audit that looks at energy costs associated with a company’s buildings, facilities and industrial processes can highlight how efficiently energy is being converted and used – and identify any areas where costs are being haemorrhaged. That allows companies to make necessary improvements – streamlining processes, for example – which can further cut energy bills and carbon emissions.
Having an expert assess your premises in detail will throw up numerous areas for improvement. There are low-cost quick-wins and there are capital expenditure projects which could take a healthy chunk out of your carbon footprint and your energy usage.
What next?
Many companies lack the in-house capabilities to monitor their energy usage, which can often lead to a nasty surprise when the bills flood in. If your business falls into this category, then it’s time to act.
Your first step should be to contact a firm who not only have the experts on hand to identify what needs doing, but also with the skills and mechanisms to put their recommendations into practice.
Following your audit, experts will be able to assist in the installation and management of Monitoring and Targeting software (and quite often a SMART meter) which allow a business to see in minute detail where energy is being used and where it’s being wasted.
But, we’ll talk more about that next time around….
