From Guest Blogger Lizzie Weakly: Five Ways to Ensure your Business is Energy Efficient
One of the most costly components of running a business revolves around energy usage. The cost of energy is constantly rising, and the amount of energy most businesses use tends to rise over time due to expansion and inefficiency.
The good news is that there are ways to improve your business’s energy usage. Let’s examine five ways you can ensure your business is more energy efficient.
1. Use Lights Only When Someone’s Present
Most businesses operate between the hours of 9 a.m. To 5 p.m. Lights that are powered outside of these hours will often be a tremendous waste of energy, as some offices even leave their lights on overnight.
Consider how much your business uses its lights. Consider measures like automated lighting to significantly reduce your energy usage.
2. Examine Temperature Control
Air conditioning and heating are two expensive components due to the energy that they use. While these measures are important for keeping your customers and employees comfortable, they may be working harder than they need to be.
Consider lowering the temperature on your heating and raising the temperature of your cooling by a few degrees. Just one or two degrees can cut an energy bill dramatically without impairing comfort.
3. Upgrade to More Efficient Components
By upgrading the components used in your machinery, you may be able to make your business significantly more energy efficient.
Shelco filters obtained from companies like PFC Equipment, Inc. are an example of air filtration filters designed to maximize airflow, which in turn leads to more efficient machinery.
Upgrades to computers, electronics, manufacturing equipment and even security measures can make a business more efficient in terms of energy usage.
4. Take Advantage of Energy Efficient Computer Settings
Computers can use some of the largest amounts of energy, but not necessarily because they are being used. Computers that sit idle with lit monitors can waste a large amount of electricity.
By taking advantage of energy-efficient computer settings, such as automatic hibernation and standby, you may be able to reduce how much power your business’s computers use.
5. Switch to CFLs
Many businesses opt to use incandescent lights because they have a cheaper entry price, but they tend to be around 20 percent as efficient as a comparable CFL.
Consider investing in CFL replacements to make your business significantly more efficient when it comes to energy efficiency.
Energy Efficiency Aligns with Good Business Practices
Auditing your business’s energy usage is something you should do when evaluating the overall efficiency of your business. Following the above tips will help you make your business more energy efficient, but it is ultimately up to you to ensure that your business makes less waste rather than more.
Changing dress codes could also reduce energy usage. Is it really necessary for men to leave their coats on all day? In some businesses that is exactly what they do. That makes it necessary to set the air conditioning for a lower temperature to keep them comfortable.
Another thing to consider is investing in occupancy sensors to control the lights and AC in rooms in the building. Anytime occupancy is not detected the lights will be turned off and AC adjusted in a more efficient direction.
Scheduling systems for meeting rooms can also help by setting the temperature before a meeting starts and turning off the lights and readjusting the temperature when meetings are over.
These items can also turn off AV systems for energy savings. You might surprised the amount of power drawn and heat kicked out by a 5000 lumen projector or even an LCD or LED monitor.
And for goodness sakes please put light sensors on the parking lot lights. Nothing galls me more than dropping my wife off for work at 1:00 in the afternoon and seeing every single parking lot light on. I see the same thing on the turnpike lights when I step out of my workplace in the afternoon for some sunshine and they are there burning away.
There really is no excuse for leaving outdoor lighting on during daylight. Light sensors have been available for well over half a century and before them there were timers. I really don’t understand such costly waste.
Trust me it happens all the time and I can just feel the waste. It makes me absolutely nuts.
I’ve seen it here in Albuquerque too. It makes me wonder if perhaps electricity is too cheap.