11 Oct 21
Once Christmas has passed we are straight into focusing on the year ahead. This is a great time for everyone to bring closure to 2020, which in my mind initially appeared to start with great promise. Throughout the year we have worked hard, maintaining data for our clients and providing reports for visualisation over the months. This is one of my favourite periods as we get to see what savings have been made in the full year. This provides a good closing point on the data. This year has been a very different year and every business will be reporting their KPIs with a view of,“lets write this year off”.
For all organisations this year has been pretty disastrous, but at the same time ‘nothing is forever’. If we drive forward and learn from 2020, we can make 2021 a better year.
If we do not step back and review what has happened in 2020, we could end up going forwards making the same mistakes.
I’m not referring to business practices, I’m referencing energy consumption, (gas, electric and water). There is so much to learn from the data and we can’t just sweep it under the carpet. If we do that, we will be starting the New Year from scratch.
What can we learn from 2020 energy data? It’s very straight forward and something we should be doing at the end of every year. It doesn’t matter if you are a ‘corner shop or an office block and every thing in between’ because you can implement the same methodology for all businesses or buildings. This works for one year but it does provide us with more observations if you take more than one year into consideration.
I just need to confirm one thing here which I’m sure is obvious, which is, the more activity you have in your business the more energy you will use.
Break everything down by month.
So for example:
Hours your offices were open per month?
How many staff were in your building per month?
How many sales did you do per month?
What was your ‘footfall’ per month (Guests or members)?
How much product did you make?
The list can go on, but you need to find the best ‘matrix’ that actually supports your organisation. Once you have calculated these figures then you can start to create a calculation for this.
You can do this in many ways but ideally you have more than one year, because if you have more than one year you have a better data stretch.
My example focusses on one year (and is made up).
Solution 1:
Take your annual consumptions for all utilities and divide them by the matrix:
Gas or Electricity – kWh / matrix = kWh per Matrix
Eg.
2020 Electricity Consumption 1,000,000 kWh / £250,000 Sales 2020 =
4kWh /£1 Sales
This is your benchmark. You could do this per building, per product or even by month.
Solution 2:
Take the monthly data and put this into excel. Graph the data as a ‘scatter’ graph.
Please note that these figures are made up to show the principle.
The above is a simple Excel sheet that I would be happy to share.
I actually urge organisations to put their data together and maybe include 2019 to see what impact you will have. The straight line trend will cross the ‘Y’ Axis and this will then show you how much energy you would consume by delivering zero sales (X=0).
This data and information becomes very valuable as this is your target figure in order to reduce your energy down, year on year and could possibly be your 2021 target.
The result in doing this will demonstrate to you what your benchmark is per matrix and will also demonstrate what background costs you have or what the fixed costs are for your energy. By doing this monthly you will be able to make a big impact in your energy consumption month on month and year on year. I have witnessed this within organisations.
Once you get your last day of data for the 31st December 2020, the bill or the meter reading, start to review both solution 1 and solution 2 and put together your observations. Let me know how you get on, I’m sure you will be surprised with some of the findings.
If you enjoyed reading this article or want to provide feedback, please contact Paul Webb at www.b2benergy.co.uk or send him a direct message. He will respond within 24 Hours
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