Check Your Unproductive Hours Electricity Consumption

The electricity usage, whether overnight, at weekends or during shutdowns, can be significant and often difficult to identify. If you look at the case studies section, you can see some clear examples of this.

The question we are frequently asked is "How do we know we need your service?".

 Well there is a free and easy way for you to check:

1 - Identify your electricity meter/s.

2 - Take a reading from each meter at the point you leave for the night, weekend, or any other period when the business is shutdown. Also note the time.

3 - When you go back into the business, take another meter reading (before you turn many devices on). Note the time again.

With the information you have gathered, you will have the number of units you have consumed over a known period of time. Lets say you left at 20:00 one evening with a reading of 29164 and at 06:00 the next morning the meter reads 29188. This means you have used 22 units (or kWh of electricity) over 10 hours - an average consumption rate of 2.2kW per hour - nearly the equivalent of leaving a kettle boiling for 10 hours.

Repeat this exercise a few times to check you are getting a real average. A couple of evenings and weekends is usually sufficient.

To gauge how much this is costing you, work out how many working hours your business operates in a year (E.g. 46 hours a week, for a 50 week year - 2300 hours) and subtract from the total hours in a year - 8760 hours. In this example it would give you 6460 hours. 

Then times your average hourly consumption by the non-productive hours in the year, that is your electricity usage. Times this by what you are charged per kWh or unit (E.g 10p or £0.10), and you will arrive at a cost to your business for electricity used whilst you are not productive. In this example it would be:

2.2kW x 6460 hours x £0.10 = £1421.20 per year.

How much you should be using during non-productive hours will vary depending on your business. Fridges, freezers, servers, telephone systems, and alarms are all examples of equipment that may need to be on all of the time. These have to be taken into account when trying to assess whether the usage you have identified is justified.

If you want further guidance then please contact us at Ark Energy Efficiency on 01202 237700, and we will help you.