There’s cause for concern when it comes to business energy prices right now… but what is the best course of action? This week, we identify some key benefits to energy monitoring and make our case for why energy data is the best first step towards cost saving.

With energy prices at an all time high and the UK heading into recession, your business will likely already be feeling the pressure to save energy. Many business owners may even be feeling confident that they can make energy savings independently, for example, if they are already aware of numerous problem areas. Oppositely though, there will also surely be businesses who feel that they are already saving as much energy as possible. 

The truth is, whether you consider yourself an energy saving guru or feel at a total loss for what to do, energy monitoring is essential to reaching maximum efficiency within your business. 

Energy monitoring can yield surprising results, highlighting new problem areas within your company and exposing the hidden extent of known issues. Energy monitoring can predict maintenance issues; help you implement a longer term energy strategy; highlight operational changes you ought to make in your business and provide essential data for sustainability reporting. 

Let us unpack the reasons for why your business needs energy monitoring, alongside examples of businesses who have benefitted from monitoring their energy consumption.

1) Energy Monitoring is Essential for Long Term Efficiency

Energy monitoring is not only important because it can help you save on energy. Energy efficiency is an ongoing process; it is essential to evaluate the effectiveness of changes after you have made them, and make further changes based on those findings. 

If you want to be truly energy efficient, accurate data is the key to knowing which decisions are the most effective. 

Once again, Silverline serves as an excellent example of this, using GridDuck to inform their long term strategy of energy saving. Mr Fatibene states: “we are now just working our way through the list of issues. We started with the biggest issues, in other words, the lowest hanging fruit to get the biggest benefits first but now we will keep going.” 

2) Energy Monitoring is Essential to Improving Operations

Energy monitoring gives you the insights to make changes in your business. Using data, you can see exactly where and when you are wasting energy and target those areas. Often energy waste is easily avoidable. It could be as simple as switching off appliances out of hours, reminding staff to be more mindful of certain problem areas or shifting the way you pack a storage space, for example. 

For example, Priors Grove Farm found that they could save energy by shifting the time of day that they packed their cold store, as well as the arrangement of goods inside the cold store. By doing this alone, the farm saved 45% on their energy spend.

3) Energy Monitoring Will Make Your Business Renewable-Ready

Energy monitoring becomes especially important when you are aiming to install on-site renewable energy generation such as wind turbines or solar panels. This way, you can view your renewable energy generation in an online platform alongside your energy usage. 

Energy monitoring will allow you to make the best of any renewable energy that you generate, for example, by switching off high consuming appliances when renewable energy generation is low and using more energy when it is abundant. 

With emissions targets affecting almost every business sector and growing demand for sustainable energy generation, energy monitoring is the first step to future-proofing your business.

4) Energy Monitoring Provides Operational Visibility and Greater Control

From a business management and operations perspective, energy monitoring can provide a very useful source of information. For example, if appliances are being left on outside of hours or operations are running behind, energy monitoring will allow you to find out remotely using an online dashboard. 

Not only this, but you can receive alerts about anomalous consumption which could signal issues, such as a machine being left on overnight. With energy monitoring, you can spot issues and step in to take the necessary action even whilst off-site. 

Spotting issues early through consumption data can also help prevent your operations being delayed or halted when equipment breaks. For a manufacturing plant or agricultural site, running a site is expensive, but having to shut it down whilst paying people’s wages is certainly more so. With energy monitoring, you will be in the best possible position to avoid such disasters.

5) Data for Investment Decisions

Energy monitoring can provide further value to your business as a means of making better investment decisions. 

If you suspect that old, inefficient equipment could be costing your business more than the price of replacing it, energy monitoring will allow you to know for sure. By comparing the monthly running costs of your equipment against the price of a new unit/units, you will be able to accurately calculate the payback period for this investment and make a clear financial case for upgrading.

This benefit is especially important for financial directors and business strategists looking to improve cost effectiveness in their business. One plastic-moulding manufacturer, Bowles and Walker, were able to save £20,000 in avoided costs this way. By measuring energy performance against investment cost, the business could alleviate wasteful equipment and make their operations more financially sustainable in the long run.

6) Energy Monitoring is Essential for Sustainability Reporting

In 2022, all businesses are required to consider and take measures regarding sustainability. Many businesses are even obliged to submit sustainability reporting and most large companies have emission reduction targets. With this in mind, energy monitoring is not only important for improving sustainability, but recording that performance too.

With accurate energy data, you can perform carbon calculations using publicly available information about the carbon emissions of electricity and gas usage. If your business is going the extra mile to save the planet, then energy monitoring will give you the data to shout about it. 

Highways England are one company who benefitted from energy monitoring in this way. As a government funded body, the organisation were obliged to submit considerable sustainability and other compliance reporting. By using GridDuck, the company could easily fulfil these requirements. 

National Highways Energy Strategy Manager, Kevin Denney, summarisis this benefit stating: “now we don’t have to go anywhere to take readings; it’s all in one place. We can find data ourselves straight away in order to populate reports which we are contractually obliged to submit.”

7) Energy Monitoring Can Predict Maintenance Issues

If a machine is broken, then this will likely be reflected in its energy consumption data. In this way, energy monitoring can prove an essential tool for highlighting costly maintenance issues. 

One GridDuck client did just this. Silverline are a specialist manufacturer in the UK who, after a tip-off from their energy data, identified leaks in their compressor. Compressors are a central piece of kit in manufacturing, and the compressor at Silverline was important for all areas of operations. 

Chris Fatibene, Silverline’s Financial Director, recalls how the company’s compressor was working at “full pelt” when it didn’t need to be, all due to leaks. Not only was this energy inefficient but it also made maintenance issues more likely in the long term. The compressor should only consume energy when it is switched on and in use, and should use less energy when it is being used at lower intensity. 

However, Silverline found that leaks were causing the compressor to be working at full capacity all the time, even when left on accidentally but not being used. By identifying this maintenance issue with energy monitoring, Silverline was able to fix the problem before it caused further breakages to the compressor.

If you would like to learn more about energy monitoring or have concerns about your energy usage, GridDuck can help. For a free, 15 minute consultation, please book yourself a meeting using Calendly.