Measure your energy-savings progress

For multiple-property owners

If you’re operating multiple properties, it may be helpful to benchmark one site against another on a “normalized” basis.  

• If you have similar businesses but of different physical footprints, compare the energy consumption between the facilities on a per square foot basis to normalize for differences in building size.  
    
• If you have similar businesses but with different operating hours, compare total energy consumed on a per-operating hour basis.  
    
• You can also compare energy consumed per dollar of revenue to normalize energy consumption based on business volumes.

By comparing energy consumption across several different variables, it should become evident which of your properties are the most energy-intensive and therefore deserve more of your attention for finding ways to cut consumption and costs.  

If you still feel a bit hazy, reach out to your utility company for help. Remember that you are their customer and they can be a valuable partner, whether it’s providing help to decipher your bill, conducting energy audits, or making rebates available to help allay the cost of any investments in new equipment, building renovations, etc.

As you examine your bills, keep in mind that there are some elements over which you have little control such as service charges and the cost of the energy itself. However, as this series of articles will demonstrate, you can control when, how much and where the energy is used.

This series of articles will address both capital improvements (new equipment, building renovations, etc.) and energy-saving measures (behavioral and operational measures such as temperature control). While capital improvements can be expensive and take time to pay for themselves, energy-saving measures can be taken quickly, are relatively painless and yield almost immediate results. These are the baby steps that added together can make a big difference. For additional information on benchmarking go to Powerhouse Dynamics.

Jay Fiske is a clean tech executive and investor with 17 years’ experience building businesses and bringing innovative and emerging technology products to market. He holds an MBA and MS in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was a Fellow in the Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) program. He earned his BS in mechanical engineering from Yale University.