Monitoring and metering your energy use

Once you have collected your energy usage data you can analyse the energy spend for the business as a whole by:

• converting all energy sources to the same unit (kilowatt hours)
• using a spreadsheet to analyse the use of each energy source on a month-by-month basis
• calculating energy costs at different intervals to use as a benchmark to measure energy-saving improvements
• identifying and measuring the factors, such as weather conditions, that cause your energy use to vary

From this you can see:

• if you're using too much energy
• how your current energy use compares with past figures
• how your business compares with the industry average if benchmarks are available
• the impact of the factors that affect your consumption

You can also do a more complicated analysis to show the impact of the factors that cause your energy consumption to vary.