Energy efficiency tips for business
28 June, 2011 by Kristen Walbran
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While every business is different, the tips I've jotted down below for Lighting, Hot Water, Office Equipment and Air Compressors, can be applied to most businesses and across industry sectors.
Hopefully you'll find at least one or two of the below tips, that you'll want to adopt.
Tip for Lighting:
Replace your 100 incandescent light bulbs with Compact Fluorescent Lamps.
The Payback: 4 months and then look to save 70% on your lighting costs from then on.
| |
100 x 27W CFLs |
100 x 100W Incandescent |
| First time costs |
$700 |
$100 |
| Annual replacement costs |
$154
(22% replaced each yr)
|
$200
(all replaced twice a yr)
|
| Annual energy cost |
$768 |
$2847 |
| Total annual cost |
$922 |
$3047 |
| Annual savings |
$2125 |
|
Assumes: 6 hours per day at 13 cents per kWh
Tip for Hot Water:
Check whether your water pipes and tanks are properly insulated.
The Payback: According to the EECA - check out the below table - much of the heat lost is because pipes and tanks are poorly insulated.
| |
Cost ($)
incl. materials & labour |
Savings ($/yr @ 13 c/kWh)
|
Simple Payback |
| Hot water cylinder wrap* |
$70-120 |
$22-80 |
1-5 yrs |
| Hot water wrap pipe* |
$5-20 |
$16 |
4-8 mths |
Source: EECA
Tip for Office Equipment:
Turn off your PCs when they're not being used.
The Payback: A regular PC takes around 120W to run - (laptops and flat screen monitors are more efficient), so that's around 2.88kWh used over a 24 hour period.
The below example shows that by turning off PCs at the weekends, businesses can save.
| |
Savings ($)
|
| Weekend period (48 hours) |
$15.96 |
| 52 weekend periods |
$829.92 |
Source: 20 PCs running for 24 hours at 14 cents per kWh
Tip for Air Compressors:
Optimise your compressed air systems, and check for any leaks.
The Payback: You can see energy-efficiency improvements of between 20 and 50%.
For example: A 500 kPa compressed air system operating at 1500 hrs per year has a single hole of between 1-3mm in size. Repairing this leak will save around $272 per year and a tonne of CO2.