We’ve spoken about our mission to lower our energy consumption and the impact it has on the environment before, but with Environment Day and Green Week rapidly approaching it’s worth noting our continued commitment to reducing our carbon footprint.
Our journey started when we engaged with Wells-based smart energy business Gridimp, energy storage company Tesvolt and carbon management firm Balanced Energy.
We installed solar panels in 2020 and whilst this helped it was only after we started working with Gridimp that we began to utilise their intelligent energy switching technology. Through initial monitoring of our energy usage Gridimp were able to identify areas that could be improved upon and where savings could be made.
We were one of the earliest adopters of Gridimp’s revolutionary smart energy solution impCabinet, which makes real-time energy management decisions based on usage. It takes into account factors such as the current price of energy and minimises costs by decreasing energy use at peak times, helping us to reduce carbon emissions (by 70 tonnes in the first year alone), whilst saving money on energy bills.
At peak times we reduce our energy use and sell the excess energy generated by our onsite solar panels back to the grid, effectively generating our own energy. Our renewable solar energy is used during the day to charge the fleet of electric vehicles and forklifts, which are topped up overnight when the energy tariff is reduced.
Whilst this activity has been taking place Balanced Energy have been giving us increasingly detailed reports that have been invaluable in showing that everything is moving in the right direction.
To date our investment in green energy technology has been almost £1m, including £0.5m in a new battery room installed during the last year. In addition, the saving in energy costs of approximately one third is invested in other net zero actions. Our journey continues…
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