Make the most of the festive shutdown

Are you lucky enough to have a Christmas shutdown or even just the extra days where your offices aren’t open at Christmas and New Year? If yes, then take the chance to let these non-working days do some energy management work for you!

It’s an ideal time to measure the baseload energy usage in your buildings when they are not open, or no one is there. So, what do you need to do?

Action: If your building(s) has half hourly monitoring of gas and electricity, then do nothing! For now. Set a reminder for when you return in January to download this information and look at the profile of energy use.

A good rule of thumb for an office building is that the baseload energy use should be around 10% of the peak use. If yours is significantly above this, it suggests that there is unnecessary energy usage during these downtime periods. This will need investigating.

Action: If your building does not have automatic meter readings, then take a meter reading before you leave for the Christmas break. Set a reminder to take another as soon as you’re back in the office.
Averaging the energy used over the days that your office / building was closed means that you can compare this to the average during busy / normal periods.

Top tip – don’t just do this on gas and electricity use. If possible, take readings or monitor water use as well. It’s a great opportunity to identify any possible leaks which you may not currently be aware of.
For help and advice about assessing your energy profile, contact us today or call us on 01908 690018.

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