How to Cut Your Retail Business Electricity Expenses

If you run retail business, I believe you understand that electricity is one of the largest expenses you have.

In where I live – an Asian country – the electricity is very, very expensive due to the inadequate supply and demand.

Recently, my businesses were not only hit by recession, but also by the Government’s new regulation – electricity usages for certain industries will be charged almost DOUBLE the previous rate. This simply means that your electricity expenses increase nearly 100 per cent.

This causes rage among entrepreneurs and business owners, especially those who are in retails.

However, us entrepreneurs have to seek other ways to cut the electricity expenses.

How to cut your business electricity expenses

There are many ways to cut business electricity expenses for your energy saving campaign.

First and foremost, ‘attack’ your number one energy consuming equipments. In retail case, change your business or retail spaces’ lightings.

Second, consider using a dimmer, instead of the conventional on/off lighting switches.

Third, sleep your PCs while not in use.

Fourth, consider using ceiling fans instead of air conditioner. Or, if it is not possible due to the weather condition, consider having less air conditioners on, and circulate the air using ceiling fans (or industrial fans) – This works for me :)

Fifth, If your business involve a number of PCs, use an affordable system that can allow several people using terminals to access a single PC. This way, instead of 5 people using 5 monitors and 5 PCs, you can have 5 people using 5 monitors and 1 PC. Even better, replace your conventional CRT PC monitors with LCD monitors.

Six, install mirrors in your stores to reflect lights.

Focus on lighting

In my opinion, lightings play an important role in your energy conservation campaign. Because, like it or not, the use of lightings determine the ‘look and feel’ of your retail spaces.

Consider changing your store’s light fixtures with fluorescent-based light bulbs. I would also like to suggest you to use metal halide lamps for your store’s warehouse light fixtures, due to its known quality as energy saver.

Doing the above can save me 25% of electricity expenses. How much can you save electricity? Please share your strategy by posting a comment here :)

Ivan Widjaya
Save energy, save business, save earth :)