Energy efficiency helps to protect the environment while delivering the same services for less money. When we use less energy, we reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we reduce the need to use too much energy to generate power plans and we improve the overall quality of the air that we breathe.
Not only are we saving the planet every time we make a move to find energy efficient solutions, but we are also saving money on our gas and electric bills at the same time. When choosing energy efficiency, you’re choosing to reduce your energy spending by 20-30% at a time. That’s a huge saving simply by making smaller changes that could change the overall bigger picture.
When you are considering the ways that you can partake in energy reduction, you need to think about your business as well as your home. If you are working for a larger corporation, it may be a good idea to find out what the green policies are in the workplace, so that you can start to implement some of your ideas where you work and create a better environment all around.
At home, it’s up to you to think about the ways that you can be more energy efficient, and below, we’re going to talk through the way that you can do this both at home and at work.
Energy Efficient Solutions For Residential Sector
There are a lot of ways that you can find energy efficient solutions for the home, and you need to be proactive in this so that you can bring down the cost of your electric bills and really make a difference to your wallet and the world. Here’s how to do it:
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Audit Your Home Energy Use
Getting an audit of your home energy use could be the best thing that you ever do for yourself as a homeowner. It’s going to really help you to get the advice of professional energy assessors, and the assessments go into depth to assess your home’s energy use.
An energy auditor will go from room to room, examining your home and working through past utility bills, too.
Most professional audits will also include thermographic scanning and the blower door test. This is all to determine whether your home is wasting energy – and where.
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Upgrading Building Shells
Installing insulation is a way to slow down the transfer of heat by trapping the air, which leads to a huge reduction in energy waste. Your building shell insulation is extremely energy efficient and it’s also cost-effective, leading to your home being insulated against air leaks. It’s a fast way to reduce your consumption and lower your bills.
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Upgrading Heating & Cooling System
Your home doesn’t have to be particularly large to be generating large electric bills every month, and a leaky heating and cooling system can really put pressure on your wallet.
If you’re interested in saving money and cutting costs, then it makes sense to upgrade your appliances in the home. One of those is your heating and cooling system, and upgrading this will stop you from using too much energy in the home.
Not only will a damaged HVAC overdo it on the energy use and be inefficient for your home, but you’re also going to find you’re spending far too much money to keep it running.
Sealing air leaks is important when you want to find an energy efficient solution for the home because it stops the warm air from leaking out of your house, and your heating system from working overtime to heat a house that will never be warm.
You can do a visual inspection of the house as well as find a professional to do a building pressurization test to check where the leaks are happening and seal them up tightly.
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Insulation For Reducing Heat Flow
Losing heat through the walls of the house can be greatly reduced by the use of cavity wall insulation. There is a gap between the walls in the house that you paint, and the brickwork outside, and when you fill this gap with insulation, you reduce the heat loss by conduction.
This can save you money in the long term, as the less the heat is escaping your home, the more you get to enjoy it yourself.
Energy Efficient Solutions For The Industrial Sector
It’s not a secret that industrial businesses use vast amounts of energy to power a range of manufacturing processes. These same processes take a lot of heat, a lot of electricity and a lot of power to get going and most of these are delivered using natural gas and electricity. Some industries waste the streams that could provide even more energy.
Below, we’ve put together some of the ways that industrial companies could become more energy efficient.
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Energy Auditing of Your Firm
Energy costs are always on the rise, which has pushed manufacturers to look for better ways to power their factories and ensure that their manufacturing processes continue.
It’s not just about knowing the amount of energy being used, it’s about finding out how effective the usage is.
The first step to an accurate picture is getting an energy audit. This is the process undertaken to discover how a facility uses energy. Once this is determined, energy efficient improvements are recommended and the process includes inspection, survey, and analysis of energy use. From here, a plan can be determined.
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Develop Energy Management Team
In a business, an energy management team is self-explanatory: this is a group of people who are there to support your energy management goals. It’s a way to determine what the goals are as a business, and management of energy is simply good business.
It’s a strategic asset and a company that invests time in having an energy management team is one that has good future profitability. Organizing a team that cares about the energy output of a business is important, and the energy management team is responsible for the planning, implementing and monitoring of the organization and its energy use.
They are also there to train others in the way energy is used in the business.
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Install Programmable Thermostat
The heating and cooling losses from a building become much bigger as the temperature difference increases. By using a programmable thermostat, an industrial business allows the reduction of the loss, which means that the temperature can be reduced greatly as needed.
In a large manufacturing plant, it can sometimes be critical to the machinery to keep the temperature correct. With a programmable thermostat, a large company can avoid a total meltdown and financial losses as well as possibly dangerous situations because of the wrong temperature in the factory.
Industrial companies need energy efficient solutions to reduce the safety risk and thermostats that can be programmed to match the season are important.
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Strategically Schedule Machinery Use
If you keep up with the data of an energy audit, then you will know which machines in the factory cost the most to run. When you know this, you can be clever in the way that you make your machines more energy efficient.
By scheduling the operation of your machinery outside of the peak hours of the business, you can reduce your electric bills by up to 30%. Most machinery can be controlled with apps and touch screens and most industrial companies use machinery that is upgraded to be smarter.
This can help your business go a very long way because you can start to learn about how your machinery works while being more energy efficient in the long run.
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Create Awareness Among Executives
Have you ever heard of energy awareness training programs? If not, you need to look into it for the future of your business. If your executives and management teams are aware of your endeavors to be more energy efficient, you can all collectively reduce your carbon footprint.
An energy awareness training program isn’t just something that can make your business more united, it’s going to be a low-cost method to reduce energy usage and it’s quite possibly one of the best things you could do for your company.
Most people are in favor of being more energy efficient in the workplace, but they don’t know what this could entail for them or how to begin.
Starting with a training program that can get everyone aware of energy efficient solutions and practices is a good place to begin, and it’s never been a better time to champion energy awareness and conservation.
Both the residential and the industrial sectors are working hard to be more environmentally friendly, but it’s up to workers and homeowners to truly make it happen.
The world is relying on everyone to keep it going, and not only that, you have to look at your costs and the ways that you could be saving yourself money.
The more you look into energy saving practices, the better your future will be as a business and the better your costs will be as a homeowner. Energy efficiency should always be the goal.
About Navigate Power
Navigate Power is a leading electricity and natural gas consulting firm, headquartered in Chicago, IL. Ranked no. 550 on the 2017 and no. 856 on the 2018 Inc. 5000 list as one of the fastest growing companies in the nation, Navigate Power continues to expand into new markets nationwide and currently manages over 30,000 commercial energy accounts and over $1 billion in energy budgets.
