4 Tips for Reducing Energy Costs for Your Business

Running a business is essentially anchored around having a product, service or commodity that you would like to provide and getting paid for it. While the standard business model sounds pretty simple and straightforward as provide and get paid, there are a lot more intricacies as far as a business is concerned.

Making people aware of your product is very important in order to attract customers to your business. Finding a way to sell to a certain niche or sector is also a core business need in order to generate the lifeblood of the business, which would be the revenue or the amount that you get paid. The addition of these 2 business functions, marketing and sales, may already seem complicated on its own but that only comprises a fraction of running the business.

The other major component in running your business you need to be aware of is the amount of money you need to spend in order to make your business runs. That is called cost and it can pertain to the amount you’ll need to spend to make or produce the product, the amount you’ll need to spend for resources to provide it, sell it, service it or market it. Costs vary depending on the product you’re providing and selling but one thing is certain for a business to survive. At the end of the day, the amount of money you get paid for the product has to exceed the amount of money you spent to provide it.

Among one of the most significant business costs across any industry is the cost of electricity. Whether your business has a full-blown manufacturing floor, you run a retail shop, or you have a sales office to meet your sales agents, using electricity is a guaranteed expense for you, unless your business model revolves around an Amish community.

Given all this, it’s important for a business to minimize costs within reason and without compromise to the quality of the product you want to deliver. These tips for saving electricity will be vital to help your business become more profitable.

1. Plan out your business operations based on your provider’s time-variant pricing

Energy companies now utilize a time-variant pricing scheme in order to encourage excess load during peak times and balance out power consumption. The amount of energy they produce is just one factor, the time that people use this energy at the same time also has significant impacts to energy production as well. Finding out when the energy pricing is at its lowest can allow you to plan activities that are not time critical yet energy consuming. An example would be if energy prices are lower at 11am to 1pm then you can have all copy work done during that window so that copying machine eats up electricity during the lowest energy time.

2. Invest in energy-saving innovations and technology

Several new technologies have appeared that can provide a windfall of energy savings. Some examples of these are heat pumps, machines that draw cold or heat from outside and blast them into the conditioned environment of your office space. These result in a 40% reduction in heating and cooling bills since they use minimal electricity to operate. Inverter air-conditioning systems which regulate the operation of the compressor according to variable speed instead of just off and on is also a popular way to reduce electricity costs especially if you live in the warmer parts of our country and in the summer. Inverter air-conditioners can run longer yet provide more energy savings. Using LED lighting is also reduces electricity cost by 55% and these prolong the life of your lighting solutions resulting in lower maintenance cost as well. If you are running a business that caters to food consider an induction cooktop oven instead of the normal gas burner or hot plate since these use about half the amount of energy needed in the more conventional means. Do some research and open your mind to demonstrations of energy-saving inventions, looking up startup companies is a great way to find out what the latest and greatest is as far as conserving energy.

3. Return to the grid with solar energy

If you have an office space or manufacturing facility that pans a large area you might want to consider purchasing or installing solar panels on your roof. The space on the roof of your facility is usually never used and putting out some dough for an upfront investment may seem expensive at first but should pay for itself in the next 5 years with reduced electric expenses and with good solar coverage can result in some revenue back from the grid. While solar panels may not be enough to sustain a heavy-duty industrial operation, it can certainly supplement the electrical cost by generating enough power to take care of lighting or the use of computers.

4. Find out about government incentives for energy-saving tools

State governments or city governments may have an initiative in place that can help save by adapting to energy-saving technologies. These usually come in the form of tax cuts or carbon credit for your company and can certainly add up for you in terms of saving on cost. A tax cut looks at reducing not one but two business costs for you and can really be advantageous especially in the long run.

These energy saving tips are a great way to minimize your costs and allow you to invest some of your profits into more meaningful efforts like your employees or back into the community.