What you can do about the rising cost of your electricity
In the same ten days last month, energy regulator Ofgem issued a warning of rising utility bills and British Gas reported an eleven per cent increase in profits. This is great news for the utility companies and bad news for your business.
Opening your electricity bill is rarely a time to get excited. In my world it is often followed with a frown, perhaps an expletive and “how much?”
In the workplace light switches often have little reminders next to them and the turning them off at the end of the day is a given. But lights are not the only thing using energy in the workplace – within those four walls is an IT system powering away that may be using much more energy than it actually requires.
Like your lights, the simplest way to reduce your electricity consumption is to turn off at the end of the day the computers you do not need to use overnight. If your business has lots of computers then there are ways to turn them off en-mass and then turn them back on in the morning automatically so that they are ready for use by your team first thing.
There is also IT hardware that has been designed to be more energy efficient. Nearly all businesses have some kind of network that links their computers together with electrical signals, but does your business have the energy efficient switch that turns the electricity up or down dependent on the length of your network cable?
Another way to reduce power consumption with your IT hardware is with virtualisation, a maturing technology that enables you to consolidate multiple computers or servers onto a single piece of hardware that consumes that consumes a fraction of the electricity.
Electricity is Running Out – Supply and Demand
The impact of rising electricity prices is made worse by the imminent risk of supply shortages. In a report published by Ofgem last October there is a risk that the UK will run out of energy generating capacity in the winter of 2015-2016.
As energy production becomes inadequate there is the risk of power cuts and brownouts to your business, the latter being a reduction in the voltage of your electricity supply but both able to damage your IT equipment beyond repair.
It is therefore important to protect your equipment with anti-surge and battery backup, and also your electronic information with a tested backup and disaster recovery strategy. Can you put a price on the intellectual property you might lose if not?
If you would like to have a chat about ways your business can reduce the electricity being consumed by your IT equipment and/or ways you can protect yourself from power cuts and brownouts, please get in touch with us on 01952 303404.