Five steps to reduce energy wastage this holiday season

Planning a shutdown over the holiday period? Avoid unnecessary costs by implementing energy conservation strategies during your shutdown.

A simple audit of your energy consumption now can help identify areas of waste and opportunities for efficiency and cost savings.Drawing on extensive experience tracking and monitoring energy data of business sites, our expert Energy Solutions team has identified some of the ways your business can avoid unnecessary energy consumption and improve energy performance over the upcoming holiday period:

Step 1: Make a checklist

Create a manual checklist, or implement automatic procedures, to turn off controls, lighting and signage that you don’t need to have on while your business is closed for the holidays. While automation of shutdown procedures is the optimal method for energy conservation, and something that our expert team can help you design and implement, having a simple checklist that your employees can manually implement is also effective.

Step 2: Take advantage of the shutdown to complete maintenance

A shutdown period is a good opportunity to undertake maintenance that may not have been possible during the year. This might include cleaning, repairing leaks, servicing HVAC equipment and tuning combustion processes. Remember, a well-maintained system is a more energy-efficient one.

Step 3: Adjust site programming for the quiet period.

If you have automatic programming for hot water or lighting systems, remember to adjust these programs for the shutdown period. Take the time to review clock schedules to avoid leaving items during the holiday shutdown and save on costs.

Step 4: Adjust equipment that can’t be turned off.

Of course, not every business may be able to turn off equipment, such as boilers and air compressors. In this case, adjusting the pressure or temperature set points in accordance with lower demand can help lower energy consumption and emissions.

Step 5: Monitor consumption to identify your energy baseline.

With normal business operations minimised or turned off over the holiday period, this creates an excellent opportunity to monitor the energy consumption of your site/s when consumption is low. Once you have established a baseline, it becomes much easier to determine further opportunities for energy reduction that would otherwise be difficult to detect amongst your usual business operations.

Want help getting started? Lean on us for support.

If you need expert help in reducing your energy consumption, whether it is over the holiday shutdown period or just as part of a greater energy and emissions reduction goals, our experienced energy solutions team is here to help.

Talk to our energy solutions experts to learn more about the products and services we offer, including Shell Energy’s Energy Management Centre (EMC) software. This reports near real-time energy usage as well as emissions and cost benefits that can be tracked for streamlined reporting against financial and environmental targets.

Reach out via energysolutions@shellenergy.nousuat.com.au or visit our Energy Solutions page.