Green your business

Business Case

Case Study 2 - Retail Outlet

Gallery Serpentine situated at 112-116 Enmore Rd, Enmore is a clothing retail outlet with an adjoining dress making work shop.

See: www.galleryserpentine.com.au

A level 2 energy audit and waste audit was conducted in November 2007 to identify cost effective methods to reduce the energy consumption and greenhouse emissions of the store and save money on electricity bills.

Summary of energy audit outcomes
The energy audit identified opportunities to:

-		reduce electricity usage by 2.5 MWh pa (12% of total electricity consumption).
-		reduce greenhouse emissions by 2.7 tonnes pa (tCO2-e)
-		save $408 a year off electricity bills.
-		achieve a payback of 2.2 years.

Greenpower

As part of our energy audit we conducted an investigation into options to purchase Accredited Greenpower to supply the store with clean, renewable energy. We estimated that supplying the site with 100% accredited greenpower would cost $1,065 per annum. While this represents an increase in current electricity costs by 34%, it would save 21.6 tonnes of greenhouse equivalent emissions a year (tCO2-e).

Examples of energy saving opportunities
The following examples illustrate some of the energy saving opportunities identified during the audit.

Controls on office equipment

Office equipment (including computers, fax machine, printers, stereos, water cooler and fridge) represents 9% of the total electricity usage of the site. Approximately 10% of this is due to equipment being left in standby mode during periods when the store in closed and unoccupied.

We estimated that installing simple controls on office equipment such as programmable digital 7 day timers and USB power boards could provide annual electricity savings of 187kWh and cost savings of $30.

Replace 60W incandescent lamps with CFL lamps

During the audit we observed a number of 60W incandescent globes used for decoration in the retail store and to provide task lighting in the work shop.

We estimated that replacing the 60W incandescent lights with 11W CFL lights could provide annual energy savings of 1,004 kWh and cost savings of $164 a year with a payback of under 6 months.

CFL lamps use only 20% the power consumption of incandescent lamps without any reduction in light output.

Replace 50W downlights with high efficiency 35W IR halogen downlights

50W halogen downlights were used in the both the retail store and the workshop. 50W halogen downlights are widely accepted to be an inefficient form of lighting. We identified several options to replace the lamps with more energy efficient lamps including: Infra-Red Reflecting 35W halogen downlights, 13W CFL downlights and 7W LED downlights. Of these, the option to replace the 50W halogen downlights with 35W halogen downlights was determined to be the most cost effective.

35W IR halogen downlights provide the same light output at a standard 50W halogen downlights but use 30% less energy. They are a drop-in-replacement and do not require installation by an electrician. In addition to energy savings the lifespan of an IR halogen downlight is longer that that of a standard 50W halogen downlight; typically in the order of 5,000 hours.

We estimated replacing the 50W halogen downlights with 35 IR halogen downlights could provide annual energy savings of 523 kWh and cost savings of $85 with a payback of 1.5 years.

Upgrade T8 fluorescent tubes with T8 to T5 converters

Standard twin 36W T8 fluorescent tubes provided lighting in the retail shop and workshop. We identified a number of options to improve the efficiency of the lighting including: installing fixed dimming (voltage reduction), replacing the fittings with high efficiency single quad phosphor fittings and reflectors and replacing the 36W T8 fluorescent tubes with 28W T5 fluorescent tube using T8 to T5 converters.

Of these options installing T8 to T5 converters provided the best simple payback of 4.7 years. We estimated this would provide annual electricity savings of 788kWh and cost savings of $128.

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