Electricity EZ - Small Business Electricity Savings

FORT WORTH, Texas - Dec. 15, 2016 - PRLog -- To all those small business electricity customers - Electricity EZ wants to give small businesses our annual reminder about cold weather and heating systems AND HOW TO AVOID PAYING THROUGH THE NOSE FOR POWER DELIVERY FOR THE NEXT 12 MONTHS.  Yes, this is a long email but it could save small businesses hundreds or thousands so read it.

Business electric delivery costs from Oncor are set based on a businesses electrical peak demand – a measurement of how fast the business uses electric energy in the 15 minutes of heaviest use in a month.  While people generally think of customers peaking in the summer with a lot of air conditioning use, that isn't always the case.  A small business will probably use more energy in the summer but the demand can actually peak in the winter depending on two things:  1) What kind of heater the business has and 2) How fast the business turns up the heat.

1)     The kind of heater a business has:  If the business has a gas heater, feel free to ignore the rest of the email!  If the business has an electric heater, especially a heat pump unit, take note!  Heat pumps can't heat real well when the outside temperature gets below 30 degrees.  Additionally, most folks turn down the heat at night to save energy.  Therefore, when an employee arrives in the morning it may be cold in the building AND the heat pump isn't working well.  So what happens? The heat pump will typically have backup strip heaters – electric resistance heaters.  These turn on when the indoor temperature stays at least 2 degrees below the thermostat set point.  The system thinks the heat pump can't keep up so it turns on the auxiliary or emergency heat (typically two different levels of strip heaters).

2)     So how fast a business turns up the heater in the morning can directly affect how much auxiliary heat turns on in the heater.  If the thermostat was set to 60 degrees and you turn it to 68 degrees the auxiliary and the emergency heat strips will turn on and the electricity will start flowing!

So, if a business turns the thermostats down on the coldest nights, the business can set themself up to use a lot of power very fast in the morning UNLESS the business turns up the heat only a couple of degrees at a time.  If both the Aux and EM heat kick on there is a very good chance the business will set their highest peak demand of electric energy(https://electricityez.com) the year due to how much power the strip heaters pull, and the fact that everything else is on to start the day.  This peak demand can then cause the business to pay more for power delivery FOR THE NEXT 12 MONTHS.

So, what to do?  A business has two choices:  Turn the heat up slowly in the morning – only a couple of degrees at a time.  Leave the heat on a little higher temperature at night.  It will use a little more power but it could save a lot on delivery costs in the long run.

If there are any questions about this please feel free to call at 817.369.5678.  And congratulations on getting to the end of this post. Electricity EZ hopes this information will help you reduce electricity costs (http://electricityez.com) for a small business. And remember, that Electricity EZ helps give businesses the power to choose their energy prices.