Find out more about what we have done to reduce our energy use.
Saving energy: Our ‘voltage power’ and ‘gas boiler optimisation’ project
It sounds complicated, but it’s actually quite simple. In our Anglian region, we recently undertook a project to minimise the amount of 
electricity and gas we use in our offices.
Voltage power optimisation is a method of improving the energy efficiency of a site by reducing the voltage that goes to the building. This means we can still power all our appliances, but they use less energy. This in turn reduces our carbon footprint and our energy bill.
Our trial of this technology in our office in Lincoln showed we saved approximately 18 per cent of the energy we used to use under the old system. On average across all of our sites we’re saving around 12 per cent on our energy bills.
This means we’re saving:
- £3744 in electricity costs per year
- 24,673kg of carbon per year
The trial proved so successful that it is now being rolled out nationally.
Gas boiler optimisation uses intelligent software and hardware to improve the efficiency of the boiler, reducing energy costs and CO2 emissions.
Typically, a boiler can lose up to 18 per cent of its heat through its casing and flue. As a consequence, the boiler will continuously fire to recover these heat losses even if there is no heating demand from the building; this results in unnecessary energy consumption, and is known as ‘dry cycling’. This technology stops boiler cycling and typically saves between 10-25 per cent of the energy used under the old system.
The optimisation control was installed at our Anglian regional head office in Peterborough, in mid 2009. We’re projecting it will save us:
- £6221 in fuel costs per year
- 38,000kg of carbon per year
At the moment, this site is using 19% less gas.
We also installed four new 100KW condensing boilers to make the most of these savings in energy. Our new boilers are approximately 40% more efficient than the old ones.
