10 Benefits of Commercial LED Lights

Energy efficiency has become a priority for small businesses and large corporations with many investing big in new highly efficient technologies that can help them reduce their energy costs as well as their carbon footprint.

When we talk about energy efficiency nowadays we can’t go by without mentioning LED lights. Over the past few years Commercial LED Lighting has become the most cost effective commercial lighting system capable of generating savings of up to 90% on business electricity bills.

Today we will list some of the major benefits that LED lighting can bring to your business.

Commercial LED Lighting Benefits

1.    Reductions of between 60% and 90% off your current electricity lighting bill.
2.    Reduction in annual maintenance costs of between 70% and 90%.
3.    Low Energy Consumption
4.    Helping your business to achieve your Carbon Reduction Commitments.
5.    Improved performance of your lighting with reduced noise and heat output.
6.    Potential to secure zero interest funding for the purchase of our solutions from The Carbon Trust.
7.    Efficiency: LED light produce more light per watt than incandescent and halogen bulbs
8.    Lifespan: LED lights last on average 50,000 hours, that is 5 times as long as the best fluorescent bulbs, and up to 30 times longer than halogen bulbs
9.    Shock Resistance: Incandescent and fluorescent bulbs are very fragile; LED lights are made with solid state components making it difficult to break with external shock.
10.    Toxicity: LEDs do not contain mercury, unlike fluorescent lamps.

Despite the huge benefits of commercial LED lights – namely long life, high efficiency and a 60 per cent energy saving on conventional lights, the UK has proved a slow adopter.   But takeup is accelerating and with  energy efficiency high on the agenda, we expect the demand for LED lighting to increase significantly over the coming years.

Eco Specialists becomes Catalyst’s preferred energy partner

In our continued bid to help our customers benefit from reduced costs and meet their Carbon Reduction Commitments, we are delighted to announce a new strategic alliance with Redditch based company Eco Specialists.  Eco Specialists specialise in the provision of the latest in energy efficient LED lighting that is proven to significantly reduce commercial lighting costs and improve your carbon footprint.

The solutions provided by Eco Specialists enable businesses to benefit from immediate cost savings and in many cases there is absolutely no capital outlay because loans can be secured from The Carbon Trust.  If your business has lighting on for more than 12 hours a day, Eco Specialists solutions can help your company to benefit from:

• Up to 90% saving on your lighting bills
• Reductions in annual maintenance of your bulbs of between 70% and 90%
• Complete Installation service
• Assistance in securing a zero interest Carbon Trust loan
• No capital outlay
• Real cost savings from day one
• Reduction in your businesses carbon footprint

Eco Specialists have recently helped PJS Mouldings to make savings of £160,000 over the next five years.  The implementation took just 3 days and thanks to a loan from The Carbon Trust PJS has no capital outlay, in fact they were cash positive on day one:

“PJS Moulding is a forward thinking, growing business.  We continually strive to drive down running costs, improve our processes and consider the impact we have on the environment.  Engaging Eco Specialists to replace our existing outdated lighting was a simple, hassle-free process.  We are now benefitting from new sustainable lighting, long term lower running costs and without having had to find any cash to do it.  It’s a win-win situation!”

Phil Smith, Managing Director of PJS Mouldings

LED LIGHTS THE FACTS:

• 80% reduction in lighting costs
• Saving £14,000 in energy bills in year one
• Savings of over £57,000 in energy costs over 5 years
• Savings of over £12,000 in maintenance costs
• Cash positive of £12,800 by end of year one
• 212 replacement tubes using the latest energy saving LED lights
• 3 days to install
• Interest free loan secured from The Carbon Trust ensured no capital outlay
• True daylight colour enabled more accurate colour recognition for machinists
• PJS lighting used 18 hours each day
• Supply, installation and maintenance all provided by Eco Specialists

To find out how your company can benefit from similar savings call Paul Maddox on 0845 366 6969, email catalyst@ecospecialists.co.uk or click here for further information on our commercial LED lights.

How to find out if you have a half hourly meter –

So how do you know if you have a half hour meter?  It’s actually quite straight forward, and all you will need to find this out is a recent copy of your electricity bill.  It doesn’t have to be the latest half hourly electricity invoice, any recent bill will do.  Then on your invoice you need to find your meter point reference number or MPAN for short.  This is a numerical version of your tariff and supply point details, and is unique to your supply.

This is how half hourly suppliers’ mange to identify your supply details and price up your electricity requirements.  The MPAN is a series of numbers, normally in a box and usually identified with a large S at the front.  In nearly all cases theses number are split up into two lines with 8 numbers at the top and 13 numbers at the bottom.

Youtube - How to find out if you have a Half Hourly meter?

The bottom line is the part that’s unique to your half hour supply, and this is how your supply details are used by a supplier.  It’s actually the top part that allows you to identify if you have a half hourly meter.

And you need to look at the first two digits of this top line, if these two digits are both zeros then you have a half hourly supplied meter and you will need to speak to a specialist half hourly supplier such as Catalyst in order to obtain comparative quotes.

If these two numbers are not “00” then it will be one of these – “03,04,05,06,07,08” which indicate that you have a non half hourly meter or NHH supply.  In some cases if you have a very small supply then it may fall into a domestic meter profile which is indicated as a “01 or 02” on your bills.

The thing to note here is that if your not sure if you have a half hourly supplied meter, then you can always just ring your supplier and ask them.  Some suppliers deliberately don’t show the top line on invoices any more for exactly that reason.  As it offers a reason for you to engage with them, and gives them the ability to up sell additional services.

If you want to compare half hourly suppliers or need help in identifying if you have a half hourly meter, please feel free to contact a member of our team.

Because it’s part of the Climate Change Bill, targeted organisations will be legally required to make the necessary preparations before April, when the scheme officially starts.

The scale of these reformations is like nothing UK business and public sector organisations will have experienced – as the Carbon Reduction Commitment’s primary objective is to reduce carbon emissions from UK organisations by 1.2 million tonnes per year. If that wasn’t ambitious enough, they aim to achieve that reduction figure by 2020.

This growing pressure on businesses, schools and other public organisations to actively lower their emissions is becoming a headache for traditional energy suppliers.

Since the 70s, their estimated billing systems has relied almost entirely on analogue meter readers. But the new wave of carbon focused bills, commitments and acts has sealed the fate of analogue meter readers, which are now becoming increasingly outmoded.

In its place will be Smart Meters, which can accurately monitor and control energy use.

The problem for traditional suppliers is cost of buying and installing Smart Meters on a national scale. Their budget for service equipment is simply too small for a national reformation of their billing system.

Not much comfort to organisations being told they have to comply with legal requirements of the scheme namely, the bit that says publishing (exact) energy emission figures is mandatory.

Enter independent energy brokers, who have been quietly expanding their product offerings in preparation for this new era of emission conscious businesses. It’s now boom time for the likes of Catalyst Commercial Services, who are using their offering of free Smart Meter fittings as an entry-point with the many organisations that traditional suppliers cannot help.

Meaning traditional suppliers could lose out even further down the line – especially considering that independent brokers have acquired carbon reduction focused services and products beyond Smart Meters.

Which goes to show that prosperity favours the prepared, as independent energy brokers are now ideally positioned to supply organisations-in-transition with the efficiency solutions they will eventually need.

Energy industry watchdog Ofgem yesterday approved an initial £319m tranche of funding to help energy transmission companies connect six renewable energy projects to the UK’s National Grid.

The construction of new links to the high-voltage network is scheduled to start before the end of the fiscal 2010/2011 financial year and will include high-profile projects to hook up wind farms in the Shetland Isles and East Anglia to the grid.

Almost half the funding has been earmarked for transmission reinforcement initiatives in Scotland, in an attempt to prepare the country’s grid for a huge increase in renewable energy capacity.

“The funding proposals will enable vital new generation, much of it renewable, to be connected to the grid,” said Stuart Cook, the utility watchdog’s acting senior partner for transmission and governance, adding that the new investment marked “a significant step towards facilitating the Government’s 2020 carbon emissions reduction target”.

Ofgem is also waiting for National Grid Electricity Transmission, Scottish Power Transmission and Scottish Hydro-Electric Transmission to provide it with enough information to decide whether it should approve an extra £764m of investment in further grid upgrades, including proposals for new links between Hunterston-Kintyre and for the Western Isles.

If financing is approved, work on these projects is expected to begin in April 2012. The additional £764m in funding would bring total new grid investments to £1 billion, representing about 20 per cent of the three companies’ ten-year investment plan for hooking up renewable sources to the grid.

However, further grid investment is likely to be required and Ofgem reiterated its commitment to investigate further funding proposals as part of its next transmission price control review process, adding that existing price controls have been extended by a year to April 2013 to ensure that the conclusions of the body’s network regulation review can be included in the next settlement.

As the end to another decade draws to a close, we take a look at what 2010 and the next 10 years is likely to bring for the UK energy market.  One thing is for certain that Governmental policy and social awareness will be the key drivers that influence the ever changing energy market over the next decade. 

With increased legislation and the start of the UK carbon trading market next year, through the recently introduced Carbon Reduction Commitment, large energy consumers will be obliged to enter the UK cap-and-trade scheme. 

Although nobody can accurately predict where this will end, we expect that over the next decade this will filter down to smaller and smaller business, until eventually a carbon allowance will be expected of each individual.  The signs of this change are already happening, and perhaps this is the only way the UK can meet is Kyoto obligation of reducing CO2 emissions by 80% by the year 2050. 

One thing is for certain that this legalisation will focus the mind and make us all aware of how much we depend on long term renewable energy sources. It will also produce a multi billion pound industry as we strive for new advances in technology that will allow us to harness the power of nature, to produce these sustainable energy sources. 

With the current demand expected to outstrip supply as early as 2015, we are in desperate need of additional supply, be this from traditional coal or gas fired generation through to further nuclear generation, coming online over the next decade. 

Which ever way this happens, it will cause controversy either politically, environmentally or through the “ClimateGate” debunkers. 

What ever happens over the next decade there’s going to be a different attitude towards how we obtain and use any form of energy, and this is likely to gather momentum as the next generation of children grow up in a world that would appear totally alien to us in the future.

Small businesses vary significantly in their size and in their energy buying expertise.

The probe identified that the smallest businesses struggle to engage in the energy market. So, Ofgem has introduced new rules to give them better protection. The majority of small businesses in Britain are micro-businesses and Ofgem’s reforms only apply directly to these companies.

Under the new rules an energy micro-business is defined as a company which*:

• consumes less than 200,000 kWh of gas a year, or
• consumes less than 55,000 kWh of electricity a year, or
• has fewer than ten employees (or their full-time equivalent) and an annual turnover or annual balance sheet total not exceeding €2m.

A business only has to meet one of these criteria to qualify as a micro-business customer.  For the full document click here. 

The new rules take effect from 18th January 2010 and will apply to all new contracts entered into on or after that date. The conditions will not apply retrospectively, meaning that for customers on existing contracts, the new rules will only begin to apply when the contract is extended on, or after that date.

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