Being punished for saving energy
Posted: Thu 26 Jul 2018, 19:05:58
Maybe the problem been discussed to death around here, but I never really thought much about it, so here it goes:
I'm going to a small gym once or twice a week. One evening, while working up a sweat, I began counting light fixtures in the hall. All in all it amounted to at least 4-5 KW for lighting alone (neon tubes mostly). 14 h/day, six days a week (the other big item being sauna heating). So during a break I chatted with the owner about energy costs and conservation. After all, couldn't he save a bundle simply by replacing broken tubes with LEDs requiring perhaps 70-80% less energy? How long would it take to pay off?
"Totally pointless", he said. Of course he had done the math, years ago. Even hired a professional energy consultant to take a look. And he had identified the possible ways to save electricity as much as possible, and eliminated quite a bit of waste. The result was that in this year he consumed a little less than the minimum amount of KWh stated in his contract (small business tariff, I didn't ask how much he pays). He said that at the end of the year he received a bill for few thousand € extra, because in accordance with the contract the power company had retroactively put his entire yearly usage into a higher tariff bracket. Ouch. And a small business couldn't get a better contract without such a clause, regardless of which supplier he chose. They all offer pretty much the same.
So, investing money to save energy is pointless because consuming less puts him in a higher tariff zone and he'd pay a lot more per KWh. It never pays off. Now I wonder how big the total wasted potential for conservation is, simply because of minimum consumption clauses in these contracts. I can't even begin to guess a number, but this small gym uses - for lighting alone - as much electricity as five or six average households (I'd estimate > 20000 KWh/a), and more efficient lights could easily cut the consumption by half, or more. Multiply by the number of small businesses, shops, workshops etc. having the same problem, and suddenly the small amounts you can save in your average home seems almost negligible.
Does anyone here have some experience with that?
I'm going to a small gym once or twice a week. One evening, while working up a sweat, I began counting light fixtures in the hall. All in all it amounted to at least 4-5 KW for lighting alone (neon tubes mostly). 14 h/day, six days a week (the other big item being sauna heating). So during a break I chatted with the owner about energy costs and conservation. After all, couldn't he save a bundle simply by replacing broken tubes with LEDs requiring perhaps 70-80% less energy? How long would it take to pay off?
"Totally pointless", he said. Of course he had done the math, years ago. Even hired a professional energy consultant to take a look. And he had identified the possible ways to save electricity as much as possible, and eliminated quite a bit of waste. The result was that in this year he consumed a little less than the minimum amount of KWh stated in his contract (small business tariff, I didn't ask how much he pays). He said that at the end of the year he received a bill for few thousand € extra, because in accordance with the contract the power company had retroactively put his entire yearly usage into a higher tariff bracket. Ouch. And a small business couldn't get a better contract without such a clause, regardless of which supplier he chose. They all offer pretty much the same.
So, investing money to save energy is pointless because consuming less puts him in a higher tariff zone and he'd pay a lot more per KWh. It never pays off. Now I wonder how big the total wasted potential for conservation is, simply because of minimum consumption clauses in these contracts. I can't even begin to guess a number, but this small gym uses - for lighting alone - as much electricity as five or six average households (I'd estimate > 20000 KWh/a), and more efficient lights could easily cut the consumption by half, or more. Multiply by the number of small businesses, shops, workshops etc. having the same problem, and suddenly the small amounts you can save in your average home seems almost negligible.
Does anyone here have some experience with that?