Electricity prices took off last week and at this rate, we’ll soon be looking at them returning to levels seen 12 months ago. If you are going to cut costs, you’re going to have to look closely at something other than cheaper tariffs.

Just as an example, I recently did an energy efficiency survey for a local plastic injection moulding factory that spends around £¾ million on electricity. It was great, therefore, to spot changes that could help them save at least ¼ of their costs and without massive investments.

Here are their top 9 savers:

• Load lopping with on-site generation - saving £90k.
• Apply for compensation for FiT and Renewable obligation payments (available to some energy intensive industries only) – saving £75K.
• Getting into a Climate Change Agreement to reduce the Climate Change Levy by 90% -  saving £35k.
• Reduce the voltage of the supply (tap down the transformers) - saving £30k.
• Insulate the process heating barrels - saving £50k.
• Use ‘free cooling’ instead of refrigeration - saving £9k.
• Update old switch start lighting systems to LED - saving £7k.
• Stop leaks on the compressed air system and turn down the pressure - saving £3k.
• Turn off the air conditioning for the server room (it doesn’t need it) - saving £500.

Of course, it’s easy to ‘identify’ these savings; it only took 3 hours. The time consuming thing is putting them into action. For this scale of operation, we offer a ‘virtual’ energy manager service to help clients move projects ahead. It’s a bit more expensive than a survey but well worth it.