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Everyone these days is taking a second glance at their utility bills and starting to consider alternative options to lower them. Companies are trying to find ways to cut costs without cutting their staff, benefits, or pay packages. Energy bills have been rapidly increasing and causing even large companies to start thinking of ways to reduce them. If you are trying to save on your company electric bill, here are a few ideas to consider:

A typical building will use most of its energy for heating and cooling purposes. This usually accounts for about 45% of your bill. Since this is the biggest controlling factor, it is a good place to start.

If you can not afford a large scale building management system, try programmable thermostats. Programmable thermostats have been noted to save users up to 30% on their heating and cooling costs. These little devices allow you to program its setting to automatically adjust the temperature at certain times during the day and also when the outside temperature changes. To get the most bang for your buck, look for the Energy Star label on thermostats.

During the summer, you can make use of fans to keep the air flowing. This will make the room feel cooler and allow you to keep the thermostat at a slightly higher setting. Every degree you can keep the temperature setting higher in the summer and lower in the winter will add up to significant savings.

Lighting is another huge chunk of your energy bills, particularly in large business that use a lot of lights or offer 24 hour service. While CFL or LED bulbs are initially much higher in cost than traditional bulbs, they will last up to ten times longer and use 75% less energy! In the end, you will be more than getting your money back out of these light bulbs.

If you are serious about reducing your energy costs, you will need to reach for higher hanging fruit and you should hire a professional energy auditor or engineering firm. Your utility company may even provide a high level energy audit for no initial cost. An auditor or engineer will do a thorough inspection of your entire business and find ways to shrink your utility bills by eliminating unnecessary energy usage and waste. This could prove to be one of the most valuable steps you ever take to reducing your energy costs.

The energy cost center is the easiest to positively impact on any company’s P&L. So get started today!

Save Money On Your Company’s Energy Bill, visit Energy Edge Technologies site for strategies on saving a tremendous amount of capital on your Corporate Energy Bill or call 888-729-5722 Ext. 100.

One of the hottest topics at the moment regards our impact on the environment. As such, we are all looking at ways to cut back on the amount of energy we use. As with many things, this energy conservation begins at home. Here is a selection of top tips to help you cut down accordingly.

Two of the biggest wastes of energy in the home are inefficient use of heating and cooling systems so, as a first step, ensure these are well maintained. Secondly, try notching your thermostats down a degree or two; you shouldn’t feel the impact too much physically but you sure will financially. Also ensure your air conditioning unit has good airflow, and any obstructions are removed.

Household appliances are also big users of energy, notably washers and dryers. Ideally, washing should be line dried in the fresh air. This obviously is a big saver, but also adds certain freshness. If the dryer does have to be used however, try and do loads so that one load goes in as soon as another finishes. This helps to retain heat in the dryer and saves energy.

Another appliance that eats up energy is the refrigerator. There are not too many people that clean the rear of their refrigerators all too often but, if this is done weekly or at least monthly, dust will be kept to a minimum and the refrigerator will operate much more efficiently. Also, the seal around the doors should be checked often to ensure there are no leaks wasting energy.

Ovens and stoves should also be well maintained; dust, grease and grime reduce efficiency and vary the cooking temperatures produced dramatically. It is also worth having a thermometer to use in an oven to get the exact temperature, as LED displays are not always accurate. A side benefit of the thermometer is that you will likely find that your food cooks better.

These are only a few basic steps to help get you started with home energy conservation. Once started, you are sure to find many other areas you can cut back on or make more efficient. Not only are you helping to do your small bit for society, but your bank balance will look a whole lot better too.

Save Money On Your Company’s Energy Bill, visit Energy Edge Technologies site for strategies on saving a tremendous amount of capital on your Corporate Energy Bill or call 888-729-5722 Ext. 100.

There are several rankings and benchmarks for corporate energy efficiency and corporations can perform an energy audit to see where they can improve with their energy usage. Corporations should look into how many kilowatts they use per square foot and how much gas or BTUs are used per square foot. Each country will have average values and recommended values for being efficient.

If you are looking to improve your company’s energy usage you can look into the different products available as each vendor will have information about its products’ energy consumption. For example, glass companies will provide information on their products’ solar heat gain and U-value, and so on.

Many more corporations are creating positions that deal specifically with energy management and many times there is compensation or benefits for those corporations that have good energy performance. There are several different ways in which corporations can make changes to their energy usage and ultimately enjoy big energy savings.

You want to make sure that your building is properly maintained as this keeps it running as efficiently as possible. Small changes can actually cause big changes in energy consumption. One such example is not running the air conditioning at night if no one is in the building. Also you can go through a retro-commissioning process to get your building back to its original state.

Steam systems are frequently an issue with energy usage as they are not maintained well. Steam traps tend to be used to deal with condensation but these can easily become stuck open and transfer the steam back into the boiler. This wastes a lot of heat as the steam goes back into the system and does not heat the building. You need to make sure these are replaced regularly and maintained well.

You also want to optimize your HVAC systems and these can account for 20 percent or more of all energy used in a building. And lastly, you might want to look into thermal energy storage or heat recovery options.

Save Money On Your Company’s Energy Bill, visit Energy Edge Technologies site for strategies on saving a tremendous amount of capital on your Corporate Energy Bill or call 888-729-5722 Ext. 100.

Buyer Beware – Using Power Factor Correction and Transient Voltage Surge Suppression to Reduce Energy Costs.

Today’s energy conscious climate has motivated many to do what they can to become more efficient and conserve energy and money. Unfortunately this same climate has prompted others to take advantage of unsuspecting consumers’ wishes to save energy and reduce expenses.

Companies that tout power factor improvement (kVAR correction) and transient voltage suppression are a good example of this bad trend. Lately we are seeing more and more of these companies cropping up and feel it is time to set the record straight.

First, transient voltage surge suppression (TVSS) plays a valuable role in improving power quality to protect sensitive equipment inside a facility. However, TVSS does not save energy. TVSS’s are only active a tiny fraction of a second to protect against voltage surges which only last for less than a millisecond. To actually reduce energy consumption the TVSS would need to actually cut power consumption for an extended period of time which is not what they are designed to do. Again, TVSS is important to protect sensitive electrical equipment but buyers should avoid vendors promising, or even guaranteeing, that they will reduce energy consumption.

Now what about vendors who claim that improving power factor will save 15% or 20% or 30% of energy consumption and corresponding cost? This one is a little trickier.

For residential applications, power factor does nothing to save energy because the typical home already has an average power factor of about 0.97 which is almost the perfect power factor of 1 or unity. In addition, the device (called a capacitor) is placed at the main circuit breaker. According to IEEE 5.5.3.3 capacitors must be situated at or near the respective inductive loads to reduce power system losses by reducing heat and distribution losses known as I2R losses.

So what about commercial and industrial facilities using power factor correction to reduce energy costs? It is perfectly appropriate for a company that is incurring penalties or a kVA billing structure from the utility company to improve the facility’s overall power factor by employing a capacitor bank at the main service entrance or individual capacitors at or near the respective motor loads. Doing so will eliminate the power factor penalties and/or reduce the kVA demand charges on the utility bill which can save significant money and provide a significant ROI on the investment.

But what about power factor correction reducing kWh consumption? IEEE also tells us that I2R losses only account for 2 to 5% of the total load in a facility. Simple math tells us that it would be against the laws of physics to get the 15% to 30% energy reduction claimed by some vendors. Think about it. Even if your facility had 5% distribution losses and you could correct 100% of the problem via power factor correction at every load (which can’t be done) you would still only save 5% at the most. No where near the claims of some capacitor vendors and manufacturers.

All that said, power factor correction when done properly will eliminate utility penalties and kVA demand charges, improve facility power quality, increase electrical system capacity, and save a little energy when applied to the appropriate motor loads.

So make an investment in transient voltage surge suppression and power factor correction when appropriate and necessary. But caveat emptor!

Save Money On Your Company’s Energy Bill, visit Energy Edge Technologies site for strategies on saving a tremendous amount of capital on your Corporate Energy Bill or call 888-729-5722 Ext. 100.