Saving your business money on energy bills

In business every cost counts, in manufacturing an extra unit of electricity to add on to your cost per unit could mean a competitor can undercut you.

If you want to save money on energy there are two routes you can take, though of course you can also follow both for maximum savings. In both cases you not only save money but boost your green credentials. Being an environmentally friendly company is more and more important to your customers and consumers further down the supply chain, this means that being green is well worth shouting about to get extra business.

So these two routes: one is to spend less on energy and one is to use less energy; spending less on energy mind you could be shopping around but the main way to really make a big difference is to go into electricity generation: you can even turn a profit on any unused energy.

So with electricity generation you are probably straight away thinking about solar panels, they aren't a bad option either. Solar panels may well be able to be fitted to the roofs of your factory, warehouse or even office building; they can also be put on unused land as well and though they need to be somewhere ideally south facing you can be far more flexible where you put them than with wind power.

Solar panels may not make you electricity everyday but when they are the amount they generate is impressive. You could though work on the theory that normally if it isn't sunny it is windy and go for both wind and solar power so you are generating power most of the time summer and winter, night and day. Of course you will still be on the electricity grid for when you need power but you can sell the electricity you generate though, it is almost like a way to store energy if you put as much energy into the grid as you take out, or you may still end up a net supplier.

Other renewable energy sources exist which you may not have thought of which aren't based on the weather: geo thermal power heats water or refrigerant using the heat from the earth itself and then the heat drives a turbine. As you would imagine Geothermal is an expensive system but it is one of the best systems for constant renewable electricity generation. If you are in agriculture with a lot of organic waste a Biopower system may be the best way to turn this waste into energy and savings: burning either the material itself or more often burning the methane that comes off rotting organic matter.

If all this sound like a bit too much for you or too much outlay you could look at getting help and funding or look at trying to save with a better supplier. Most suppliers charge an amount that only very slowly reacts to falls in the wholesale cost of electricity and gas, if you go to some suppliers though they can offer you a price linked directly to what they pay where they shop around a lot harder for cheaper supplies, especially of natural gas. A fixed price option or a tariff based on different prices for high and off peak electricity may also be right for your business.

Otherwise you may want to focus on cutting your electricity usage, it is important in business to have an organization wide ethos of sustainability and saving energy. It's easier for employees to leave computers and machinery on than shut them down and they may see no problem with leaving computers on stand by and lights on over night: link their bonuses to energy savings if you really want to get them thinking about how they use energy. You may have to outlay to make really big savings though, old inefficient machinery and equipment, including lighting, may be costing you the cost of replacements every few years in wasted energy. Try monitoring different equipment's energy usage to see how much you could save with new equipment and how long this would take to pay for the outlay.

Author believes in energy conservation and recommends solar power not only for saving the bills but also for contribution towards environment protection.