The Electricity Market Reforms are focused on creating long-term stability for energy generation in the UK.
But at the other end of the market, the picture is still the same: organisations of all sizes continue to be hit by rising energy costs and, in many cases, are struggling to engender a commitment from staff across the organisation to cut energy use. Facilities managers must be the drivers of a new philosophy within their business to create a culture of energy saving.
With Ofgem predicting a drop in spare electricity from 14 per cent to 4 per cent in the next three years, it is easy to fall into an “Eeyore” state of mind and see only doom and gloom.
When you couple this with hundreds of “groundbreaking” energy-efficient products hitting the market every day and the seemingly endless number of energy trade shows, it is no wonder that FMs are losing sight of how they can really reduce energy consumption and save money for their business.
But the answer may be simpler than you imagine; a three-point philosophy change as to how businesses buy, measure and use energy can make significant cost savings with minimal impact on the bottom line.
Market instability, an antiquated energy infrastructure and the retirement of a fifth of the UK’s power stations over the next 10 years mean a future of price rises to energy tariffs. Facilities managers must now find the right utility unit rate to maximise energy savings and minimise energy spend; if companies are on the wrong tariff from the outset they will never be able to achieve their optimum cost reduction from energy saving.
The use of energy brokers is rising. Such organisations have the ability to search the whole of the market and offer a range of tariff rates. When you add to this a broker’s ability to navigate a confusing maze of tariff possibilities and consolidate multiple contract end-dates to a single day, it is easy to see why businesses are turning to these intermediaries for help.
Monitoring use
Securing the tariff rate is just the start of the process. Once decided upon, it becomes important to understand where, when and how this energy is being used. This is the second philosophy change needed; monitor the use. AMR (automatic meter reading) meters are not new and many businesses will already have them, but few use them to their full potential.
Suppliers of AMR meters take data and produce non-estimated billing without the client ever seeing the AMR output. Being able to see the data allows facilities managers to understand their business’s energy consumption and make changes to their operations to reduce it. Diverting the AMR data to a reporting platform is essential.
Using the reporting platform software provided by brokers allows facilities managers, or anyone with a vested interest in energy use and its financial implications, such as finance directors, to monitor and target their business’s energy use, to identify unusual patterns, trends or out-of-hours consumption.
Meters reading software allows FMs and finance directors to monitor and target their business’s energy use.
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Green bubbles
These web-based reporting platforms gives users full insight into their business’s water, gas and electricity use. Reports on energy consumption, and thus energy waste, can be shared across an organisation automatically, and in as much detail as each of an organisation’s audiences requires. It can also give minute, circuit board-level detail. For example, which strip of lights are being left on out of hours? Is the air conditioning running in line with the defined control strategy?
Using these reports can lead to dramatic savings, including the 80 per cent that one business was able to save on its gas bill after one of its energy managers identified an anomaly in gas consumption that turned out to be the result of a failing optimiser. Without the visual representation of when and where the energy was being consumed, the saving would not have been discovered.
Another business was able to cut in excess of £14,000 a year from its energy bills because staff were leaving air conditioning units running and lights on outside of office hours when the building was empty.
AMR reporting platforms can send automated daily reports on consumption and carbon dioxide levels as well as comparisons between days, weeks or months, and set alarms if use falls outside of normal patterns.
Keeping it up
When first installed and used, AMR, and its counterpart reporting, is seen as the “new toy” frequently played with. The FM will check the building usage from home after work and the next morning can berate those who identified as having left equipment running overnight.
As a result, staff know they are being watched and, for a time, this behaviour change creates a “green bubble”. Yet all too often this bubble pops soon after, as the new toy becomes just another tool. Interrogation of reports slows to a stop and staff behaviour slips back to its energy-wasting, money-spending old ways.
So, the third and final philosophy change is to keep monitoring use and engage staff in energy savings. Creating a “green team” within a business can maintain the savings identified in those early few days and weeks. It can work within each area of the business, formalising efficiency procedures and ensuring continual improvements in the reduction of consumption. There is anecdotal evidence of teams that leave chocolates on the desk of staff who turn their PCs off at lunchtime or reward departments who reduce their use of copiers. The introduction of AMR data into weekly staff newsletters or daily intranet updates has been proved to drive and maintain energy savings within a business.
This is also used to congratulate staff on the good job they are doing to help. The green team can have a significant impact on a business’s energy use with very little investment; it’s all driven by energy data.
There are a number of pieces of existing and forthcoming legislation that are relevant when considering energy monitoring. Article eight of the EU Efficiency Directive states that through the Smart Metering Implementation Programme, organisations within smaller non-domestic sectors will receive smart meters.
Reporting capabilities
This means that smaller businesses with an electricity profile class of 03 and 04, or a gas consumption of less than 732MWh a year will receive the technology.
But what is the point of owning a smart meter if FMs and their businesses are not making the most of the associated reporting capabilities?
The volatile market and energy efficiency legislation are not going away, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution to cutting costs and consumption.
But a simple change to the philosophy of how we manage and control energy and a realisation that responsibility for energy needs to be taken at individual company level will leave business with a solid foundation in preparation for what’s to come.
