With Christmas parties booked, and secret Santa’s bought, preparations for the festive period are well underway. Yet for office-based businesses planning to close over the impending festive period, there are some other preparations companies, especially SMEs, should be considering before the Christmas shut down.
Firms that want to ensure they are in the best position to kick start the New Year can benefit by taking measures to reduce their energy consumption over the holidays.
To help business owners prepare Haven Power, one of the UK’s largest business electricity suppliers, has created some simple no-cost energy saving tips:
· Switch off all the lights
Lighting contributes to a large portion of the typical office energy consumption. By taking an extra minute to ensure all lights and lamps are switched off can mean significant savings. For offices with motion sensing light systems ensure that passing cars or pedestrians can’t accidently activate your lights.
· Turn down the thermostat
This might be another obvious suggestion, but heating roughly equates to 35% of a SMEs energy costs1. By lowering the temperature by just 1°C can potentially reduce an office’s annual heating bill by up to 8%[1]. On the last day in the office, turning down the thermostat a bit to lower consumption but, high enough to prevent frost from damaging the property.
· Unplug Laptop chargers
On average, leaving a laptop on charge for 24 hours costs £1.68, so for a company of 20 employees, laptops consistently left plugged in can set your company back a considerable £12,200[2] per year. With a holiday shut down of ten days, taking an extra minute to unplug or switch off chargers could reduce your overheads by £336.
· Shut down non-essential equipment
These are things that you might not consider to be a drain on power, like the water coolers, fridges, printers, and kitchen appliances. No one will be using these appliances over the holiday period so consider switching these off too. Before shutting down take a walk around the office to make sure nothing has been overlooked.
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