Small business owners will know only too well the importance of monitoring and, where possible, lowering their spending, which is why we are talking about electricity use today. In collaboration with our friends at utilitybidder.co.uk, who are working on a campaign to help businesses save money on their utility costs, we want to talk about exactly where your business is using electricity where it doesn’t need to. In reducing the amount of wasted electricity your company can save big money on its bills, and these are the main areas which you should be looking at.

Lighting

You may think that the money you spend on lighting is a necessary evil and to some extent you’d be right. With this being said however you may very well be spending more than you need to on your monthly lighting costs. Behaviors are important here and getting your staff to switch off lighting when it isn’t needed is going to be a positive contribution to lowering usage. You should also be looking at using timers so that the lights are off when the business is closed, and switching to LED bulbs will save you quite a chunk too.

Heating and Cooling

Central HVAC systems, portable heaters and coolers, they are notoriously expensive to run and will drive up your energy bills. To ensure that you are using these tools effectively you should ensure that you have thermostats installed which will manage usage and ensure that the temperature is right in the business, but only when necessary. Be sure to upgrade and service your systems regularly so that they are operating at optimum efficiency.

Desktop Computers

Most businesses depend heavily on computers in order for their business to run, and these are also one of the heaviest uses of electricity in the business. Switching to laptops can offer a large saving each month but if you don’t wish to do that then using power saving settings on the computers and ensuring that employees are switching them off when not in use will also be essential to helping reduce the amount of wasted electricity consumption.

These 3 areas are the most common ways in which small businesses in particular are wasting energy. In order to prevent this you have to be focused on what exactly is using the most electricity and whether or not this is essential. Once you switch your focus to this you will begin to see many areas of the company which you can tweak and change to make sure that all of the energy being used in-house is completely necessary.