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4 ways to cut your biggest non-energy cost - Distribution Charge

By Talk Power Team | Posted November 15, 2018

Extra opportunities to manage costs and meet your budgets

Good everyday habits can add up to surprising results over time. Just like a short everyday exercise routine can help you trim down over the year, so small changes to your organisation’s daily energy consumption could trim down your Distribution Charge.

It might surprise you to know that your Distribution Charge can make up as much as 20% of your bill. So it’s worth taking a look at how other organisations have managed to reduce this charge to control their budget.

 

What is a Distribution Charge?

Check out our latest video to find out what it is, where to find it in your bill, and how it works.

 

Click image to watch video

 

How to crack it:

Tweak your everyday energy routine

As Sam Taylor, a Senior Account Manager at EDF Energy, mentioned in our latest video, the key thing is to know what time of day your red, amber and green zones start and finish. Then shift as much consumption as you can out of the red zone, into amber, or better yet, into a green time zone. Let’s see how it’s been done by other organisations.

 

See how it’s done:

Green up your clean up time

This is a popular one amongst many of our customers, who have saved money by re-scheduling when they have their offices or sites cleaned. One example is a local council office that scheduled their cleaning between 6 and 7pm every evening, which was bang in their local red zone and could cost as much as £100 in energy costs per night. Once they understood how their Distribution Charge worked, their cleaning team shifted their timing and now the energy they use can cost as little as £20 a day – which adds up to a sizeable annual saving. 

 

Some more bitesized charge-busters to try

  1. Trim down your heating and cooling times: Adjust the set points that control how long you heat (or cool) your space to cut your energy consumption in the red zone. Basically you can take advantage of the fact that it takes a good 45 minutes for temperatures to dissipate. For example you could switch off the heating around 4:45pm and by 5:30pm no one would have felt the difference before they pack up to leave for the day, saving you 45 minutes of energy for heating, or cooling.

  2. Spot your change: Use your half-hourly data (easy to download for free from MyAccount) to chart your daily energy use patterns. That makes it easy to see how much of your consumption falls into each time band and gives you a way to track whether your efforts are making a difference in future.

  3. If you want to be a bit more sophisticated (and less manual), get a remote energy audit, like our PowerReport, or even a live energy monitor, like our PowerNow system. These will give you more insight about where and how to make your consumption efficiencies during the red zones.

  4. Shift your energy hungry activities: Work with the teams in charge of energy-intense activities to move them into the green zones whenever they can. Laundry and food preparation (especially those involving cooking) are great examples of processes many of our customers have managed to move to more budget-friendly times.


Want to know when your red, amber and green time zones are? We've included these in the table below. 

And that’s it, a few daily tweaks and shifts is all it takes

It’s good to know that you and your team could make some changes to when and how you use energy which could perhaps result in some welcome reductions in your bill.

We hope these bitesized tips, ideas and changes help you do that. And as always, we’re here if you have any questions or need some help.

 

 

 

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