Here at DCSix Technologies we have been working closely with our clients through COVID to help them protect their profits from being eroded by energy bills. One of the great things about energy efficiency is that, once you make savings, they go straight to the bottom line and they stay there, year after year. Even if the return on some measures might not seem overly impressive at first, it is worth considering how many extra sales you would need to make the same amount of profit. For a company with a 5% profit margin over 3 years, a €500-a-year saving from energy efficiency makes the same profit as €30,000 of extra sales, so making small savings each day can add up to make a big difference.
At DCSix Technologies we implement the four-step process shown above. The first step to proactively managing energy use is monitoring its use. Effective monitoring gives owner’s crucial information about how their buildings are performing so that substantial, almost-immediate improvements can be implemented. In the visualization step, the energy and production information collected in the measurement step must be analysed. Then that information should be visualized by part, product, or equipment. Energy monitoring can help find the potential for energy reduction, which in turn helps them determine required energy efficiency improvements. Effective energy management requires identifying energy inefficiencies so they can be addressed.
One area we have been helping our clients with has been the reduction of baseload, this is the load that exists 24-7 on premises, some of this is unavoidable, security lights, refrigerators etc. However, what we have found with most clients is there is often a considerable proportion of their baseload that is unnecessary.
Take this office in Limerick for example, after leaving our Wattrics unit in place for 4 weeks it was apparent that a significant amount of this consumption was outside of office hours. At night-time when the building was not in use the load remained at around 1kW, this equates to around €2.40 per day for the 14 hours the office is not occupied on weekdays and €4.30 per day on the weekends when the office was occupied. These values can seem trivial for businesses that generate hundreds of thousands of euros in turnover each year, however when you look at it over the course of the year it is apparent how quickly this adds up. At this location we predicted the baseload costs would equate to over €1,200 over the course of the year, the business owner detailed that in his sector profit margins for Q4 2020 were 3.15%. So, in order to generate the equivalent of €1,200 in additional profit, the business would need to secure a sale of a value in the region of €38,000, with this in mind we customised the dashboard accordingly, we focused initially on demonstrating how significant the baseload costs were.
We also included a panel that showed how the buildings baseload over the different days of the week. This allowed an understanding of what baseload was absolutely essential and the additional cost of not switching off devices.
Unfortunately, like so many other Irish offices this one has not reopened in 2021, it’s staff are going to continue to work from home until it is safe to come back into the office. In recognition of this the office’s facilities manager carried out a sweep on the premises switching off anything that was not absolutely essential. At the time of writing their load is staying around 600W, we have also created an alert for the owner if this increase significantly while the office remains closed.
If you would like to know about how DCSix Technologies can help protect your businesses profits through what’s bound to be a very challenging year please feel free to contact me directly at barry.bambury@dcsixtechnologies.com