Energy Efficiency Council Agrees with Tropical Energy Solutions – reducing electricity costs is about more than chucking some solar panels on the roof.

If you read our blog articles or follow us on Facebook you will know that we have long said that reducing electricity costs should include a range of activities such as tariff optimisation, efficiency upgrades, behaviour change, automation, energy audits, and power factor correction.  These should be done as well as solar and battery storage, not instead of.

A couple of days ago the latest issue of the digital magazine “Energy” landed in my In Box.  It has an article called “Energy efficiency: the secret sauce to bill relief”.  It’s very much in line with our mantra, so I thought I’d use this blog article to help spread the good word.  Here are some of the salient points:

• Energy Magazine spoke with Energy Efficiency Council (EEC) CEO, Luke Menzel, about the critical role energy efficiency strategies will play in the current energy crisis and beyond.
• Recently, industry members and policymakers alike have been grappling with the “perfect storm” that has become the National Electricity Market (NEM)’s energy crisis – a culmination of high gas and coal prices driven by shortages as a result of the war in Ukraine; unplanned outages of generators; and a cold start to winter.
• “From our point of view, it’s important to understand that the energy crisis will have real impacts on households and businesses,” Mr Menzel said.
• “There will probably be a more immediate impact on businesses that are exposed to the spot markets in electricity, but particularly in gas. Businesses could see their electricity and gas costs go up by 400-500 per cent, which is going to be catastrophic for energy- intensive businesses.”
• Unfortunately, Mr Menzel believes that there isn’t a huge amount the Federal Government can do to alleviate the circumstances in the short term, however, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be done about energy bill stress.
• “We think it’s vitally important to get the message across to energy ministers, and the public – that we can make real inroads into the energy crisis by being smarter about how we use energy,” Mr Menzel said.
• While the traditional approach to energy market problems has involved supply-side solutions (i.e. building more generation, building more network assets, or imposing more regulation or other interventions on energy network participants in front of the meter), Mr Menzel argues these measures simply aren’t enough to address the current crisis.
• Instead, he proposes a focus on behind-the-meter solutions to put downward pressure on energy bills by making the system cheaper to run and reducing the exposure of households and businesses to high peak prices.
• “In a lot of cases, these can be simple energy efficiency and energy management – things like draught proofing and insulation, managing energy use to take better advantage of solar generation, doing energy audits in business settings. These things can really quickly deliver significant energy savings, leading to lower energy bills,” Mr Menzel said.

Read the full article here: https://www.energymagazine.com.au/energy-efficiency-the-secret-sauce-to-bill-relief/

To find out how Tropical Energy Solutions can help you reduce your electricity costs, give us a call on 4772 7394, E-mail: mark@tropicalenergysolutions.com.au or visit our office as 1 Carse St, Hyde Park, Qld, 4812