Trying to wrap your head around your energy usage, demand charges and tariffs can seem like more trouble than it’s worth, especially for busy business owners. But what if managing your energy was easier than you think?
It’s not just about saving money, recent studies have confirmed that environmental concerns are on the rise among consumers, with one finding up to 53% of online and in-person shoppers prefer to buy from brands they know are sustainable.
Enter Origin Zero’s new energy management platform, EnergyZone, which makes it easier than ever for businesses to understand, track and control your energy use.
EnergyZone is your one-stop shop for practical everyday actions like viewing and downloading bills, meter data and contracts, making payments, and managing user access — you can even check if your site is suitable for solar.
EnergyZone gives businesses a direct line of sight to energy usage, consumption patterns, estimated greenhouse gas emissions and energy costs. You can also check if you’re eligible for lower network charges and unlock tailored energy recommendations, empowering you to optimise your usage, track your emissions, and reach your decarbonisation targets.
Deep-diving into your energy bills can be daunting because—let’s face it—it’s a complicated topic full of unfamiliar terms.
When you sign up for EnergyZone Pro—a paid subscription within the EnergyZone platform—you’ll be able to access your very own tailored insights report. This report is delivered directly to your inbox complete with an analysis of your energy consumption and advice aimed at helping reduce your energy usage and costs.
“The idea here is to give businesses more control over their energy use,” says Mena Goyen, head of insights and data products at Origin Zero. “Because the more you understand about how you use energy, the more you can find things to optimise—and even small changes can make quite a big difference.”
She shares the story of a business that was seeing spikes in energy use at peak periods.
Turns out, they were plugging in all their forklifts when they left for the day, around 5pm, “which is probably the most expensive time of day to consume energy,” Mena says. “And so, they came up with a strategy around setting up a timer, so they were able to shift that consumption to the off-peak period, which is much cheaper for them.”
In another example, an EnergyZone Pro insights report revealed a showroom that was also experiencing a spike in energy use during peak times. It didn’t take them long to work out what was going on.
“We found out that it was always on Friday, and it turned out that they had the floor cleaners come out on Friday afternoons using big, floor-polishing equipment,” Mena says. “All they did was change their contract, so the cleaners came in after the peak period, and by shifting their energy use they saved a lot, while also reducing their impact on the grid in that peak period.”
Having decarbonisation goals is one thing—knowing how to actually go about achieving them is another.
When you sign up to EnergyZone Pro and take a deep dive into your insights, Origin Zero can help implement a range of energy solutions for customers, designed to reduce energy costs and lower emissions.
This could include assessing your site for solar suitability, checking that you’re on the right network tariffs, and reviewing your Power Factor, which rates how effectively your business is accessing electricity from the grid.
According to Mena, the first step to reducing your business’s energy consumption is to look at your usage alongside your operations schedule to figure out if there are any gaps or waste.
She also suggests:
“By understanding your energy use more broadly and your average profile, you can identify potential anomalies,” Mena says. “This could be spikes in energy use, it could be plant equipment failure, or other things that are happening from an operational perspective that you weren’t aware of unless you looked at your energy usage.”
If you’re already feeling a bit out of your depth, don’t worry. Once again, energy is a complex topic, but Origin Zero is working hard to demystify it.
“Part of the cool thing about EnergyZone Pro is the ability to educate customers around energy and the tangible things they can do that help them reach their decarbonisation goals,” Mena says. “The feedback so far has been very, very positive, people are finding it really easy to understand. And quite a lot of our customers are taking the insights straight to management and finding ways to run their operations more efficiently.”
Origin Zero EnergyZone lets you take control of your business’s energy with personalised insights and advice to help you optimise your usage, track your emissions, and reach your decarbonisation targets.
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