6 Ways to Impact Energy Spend in Grocery

One common challenge in grocery retail is reducing energy costs.

Energy cost savings go straight to the bottom line and contribute directly to profit.

As a grocery retailer, you may have reduced energy consumption by installing:

• LED and high-efficiency fluorescent lighting.
• Setback thermostats.
• HVAC fan motors with variable speed drives.

Now you are ready to move your organization beyond these types of projects. Consider the benefits of an energy management system that interfaces with your controls systems to help reduce energy costs while maintaining the customer experience.

An energy management system gives you information with key recommendations to change your business process and drive savings.

Here are 6 ways it can impact energy expenditure:

1. Monitor and Control the Energy Use of Your Operations Remotely.

• Check data, change settings, make set-point adjustments, from your desk or mobile device.

2. Confirm accuracy of utility bills.

• Compare actual energy use to what is shown on utility bills to help eliminate errors and overpayments.

3. Record energy usage within your stores.

• Monitor energy use (e.g., indoor/outdoor lighting, HVAC, refrigeration).
• View energy use by location or equipment type via dashboards.

4. Get a clear overall picture of energy use.

• Take readings throughout the day or monitor energy use in real time at all of your stores.
• Consolidate and record readings from all locations via a central data manager.
• Show energy use, savings trends, and detail for all units in a graphical view.

5. Identify potential equipment problems before product loss.

• Monitor energy use and detect changes in operating status of individual pieces of equipment via sensors.
• Catch problems earlier, a malfunctioning case is likely to use more energy, to save on repair costs and prevent product spoilage.

6. Predict and verify energy savings of equipment purchases.

• Analyze energy use of specific types of equipment to help determine future purchases and predict ROI for your investments.
• Conduct a before-and-after comparison of actual energy use to see if the maintenance work (e.g., a refrigerant retrofit) resulted in any energy savings.