Energy Management
The high cost of electricity and damage to the environmental are proving to be powerful drivers for organisations seeking to play their part in reducing harmful emissions.
Electricity Costs have increased exponentially over the last 10 years.
Electricity prices have experienced continual rises over recent years, and this trend is expected to continue.
Generating power on your own site is now considerably cheaper than sourcing it from the grid. By doing so, not only do you reduce the cost of your electricity, but you also eliminate and/or reduce many accompanying overheads such as transmission charges, line losses, and capacity charges.
In 2021, Electricity accounts for only 37% of an electricity bill
What is causing electricity price rises?
Almost 2/3rds of electricity bills are now comprised of non-electricity costs.
The transition to clean, renewable power generation and the introduction of financial support mechanisms has adversely impacted energy costs with the financial burden falling on consumers, particularly businesses.
The resulting cost differentials between self-generation and grid power costs is now compelling.
What can be done to reduce electricity and gas costs?
The 2 traditional solutions to reducing energy costs are, 1) Obtaining better prices and, 2) Using less energy. These strategies are still the best places to start, but once you have done that, what else can you do then?
Reduction Strategies
The fact is, there are a range of options, with more emerging continually, the main of which are known as Distributed Energy Resources (DER). These are small-scale power generation systems and storage technologies (typically in the range of 100 kW to 20 MW), placed at or near the point of use.
There are a range of technologies that fit this description ranging from Solar and Wind Power, Biomass, Fuel Cells and Combined Heat and Power (CHP)and gas fired generation.
What can be done to reduce electricity and gas costs?
The following solutions provide a variety of options to reduce your costs and carbon emissions.
Solar PV
Solar Photovoltaic (PV) converts solar energy into electrical power and many buildings afford opportunities to deploy Solar PV on commercial roofing, much of which is underutilised. Not only can this greatly reduce running costs for the building it can also generate income by selling back to the grid under Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs). Additionally, revenue and/or power conservation can be maximised by integration with battery storage.
For more information on Solar PV, see here
Solar power is not suitable for all sites, so what other options are there?