Royal Hallamshire Hospital
Voltage regulation helped to deliver more than 5% energy efficiency improvements and 11.5% reduction in kVA for this hospital
Energy Affordability and Efficiency
The UK is facing an unprecedented increase in energy costs, which in turn is driving what many are calling a growing cost of doing business crisis. While historically procurement has played a major role in reducing energy costs for businesses, the current market means that the savings to be found through procurement are increasingly small.
At the same time, businesses are facing cost pressures from their energy use that are forcing them to make difficult decisions to compromise on productivity, or even threatening the viability of the business itself.
Mitigating the Energy Price Crisis
The Energy Crisis continuing unabated, energy bills are forecast to continue to trend upwards until at least 2023, and will remain volatile over the coming decade. Businesses that rely on the grid alone for their energy supply, without taking steps to either generate on-site or use the energy they do purchase more intelligently, will remain exposed to this volatility. Particularly during winter months when energy prices rise due to higher demand, electricity costs will continue to make up a significant and growing portion of your overheads.
Conversely, for many businesses, the best way to mitigate rising energy prices is to invest in technologies that are able to provide a significant improvement in terms of both energy costs and sustainability over their lifetime. The cheapest unit of electricity is always the one that you don’t use, making investing in energy efficiency measures one of the best ways to reduce overall costs. For a growing number of businesses, on-site generation such as solar PV or wind can provide clean electricity while reducing your exposure to volatile and rising wholesale energy prices.
Balancing the Energy Trilemma – Energy Affordability
Finding solutions for rising energy costs is challenging, and even more so when viewed through the prism of the energy trilemma. It would be careless and short-sighted to risk sacrificing the other elements of the trilemma, sustainability and security of supply, in favour of short-term cost savings.
That said, with many businesses at risk of breaking under the strain of rising energy costs, solutions need to be found. Powerstar’s range of technologies offer significant savings through better energy efficiency, and can even mitigate energy costs through unlocking new revenue streams. Contact our team and see how we can help your business with it’s energy affordability.
Find out HOW Much You Could Save
The cheapest and greenest energy is the energy you don’t use.
Are you worried about the ever-rising cost of electricity for your business? Find out how much money you could save by completing our 2-minute Energy Saving Calculator.
Grab a recent electricity bill, fill out a few details and within just a few minutes you will have a savings estimation.
Why does energy efficiency matter?
Whether you are trying to reduce your carbon footprint, spending on energy or vulnerability to power disruptions, the cheapest, easiest, and quickest thing to do is improve energy efficiency.
The overall energy efficiency of a site is difficult to measure, and it is not typically a core aim when installing, maintaining, or upgrading electrical equipment. However, it can be quick, easy, and highly profitable to look at improving your energy efficiency.
Simply upgrading transformers saves 7% on energy use of some equipment. Installing voltage regulation to a site can reduce total consumption by a similar amount. Adding battery energy storage or a microgrid control system will achieve maximum energy efficiency by optimising where and when the energy is delivered.
WHY DO YOU NEED TO THINK ABOUT YOUR ENERGY EFFICIENCY?
Electricity costs continue to rise and pressures for businesses to reduce carbon emissions are growing. Simultaneously, the current energy transition is moving away from traditional fuel sources as everything becomes electrified. Your communications, critical processes, money, data, and even your car and heating are quickly becoming reliant on stable electricity.
Therefore, it is vital for your business to actively manage and optimise its energy profile to be as efficient as possible. Optimising your energy efficiency helps minimise CO2 emissions, reduce overheads, and bolsters power resilience.
This is particularly important if you use a high amount of electricity for your day-to-day business operations. However, almost all businesses will feel the impact of rising energy costs and would benefit from improved efficiency.
Download & Read our free Energy Trilemma White Paper: “Tackling the Energy Crisis with Intelligent Infrastructure – How businesses can navigate the Energy Trilemma”
HOW CAN YOU IMPROVE ENERGY EFFICIENCY?
The first step is to understand your business’ energy consumption and identify where improvements can be made. Initial identification can be easily achieved in a non-invasive manner by analysing a site’s consumption and generation data.
Depending on what the analysis shows, businesses can optimise and enhance energy efficiency in a number of ways:
- Regulating the incoming voltage supply to protect against voltage spikes and dips, protecting sensitive electrical equipment while reducing energy consumption and costs
- Reducing reliance on the electricity grid with on-site generation, helping minimise inefficiencies inherent in the supply from the antiquated electrical grid, and reducing the non-commodity aspect of your energy bills
- Utilising battery energy storage technology that allows for greater control and flexibility of your electricity use. This can help you reduce electricity costs and maximise output from on-site generation, fundamentally improving the way your electricity is generated and consumed
- Improving high voltage (HV) infrastructure by replacing aging distribution transformers can protect your site from unplanned downtime through equipment failures. Additionally, modern transformers are generally much more efficient and subject to lower losses
- Implementing a sophisticated microgrid control system with ongoing data collection and analytics provides the ability to identify opportunities for further energy efficiency measures to be deployed
By Improving your overall Energy efficiency your organisation will waste less power and as a result lower your energy bills and make your power more affodable.
Contact us to discuss how we can help improve your business’ energy efficiency
Related case studies
Birmingham Stopper
This UK manufacturer was able to eliminate 75 tonnes of carbon equivalent from their annual footprint with the help of voltage regulation
Quorn Foods
A combination of voltage regulation and low-loss transformers saved this leading food manufacturer over £71,000 on their annual energy bills.
Swann Morton
Voltage regulation helped to remove over 100 tonnes of carbon emissions annually from this manufacturer's carbon footprint.
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