Infographic: How to push power bills down and profits up

If a dollar saved is a dollar earned, then your business could be missing out on some serious earnings if you aren’t doing everything you can to cut your energy bills.

Energy bills are a fact of life for business owners – and they’ve been steadily rising in many parts of Australia. But it is a rare business indeed that would not want to be using less power and pocketing more of their revenue as a result.

There are four main avenues you can take to powering up your energy cost-cutting:

1. Cutting back on the most obvious sources of energy use in your business.
2. Enlisting the help of a professional to chase more advanced energy savings.
3. Buying more energy efficient appliances and equipment.
4. Negotiating a better deal with your energy retailer to pay less for what you do use.

Best of all, doing this will do more than just save you money quickly – it’ll help reduce your business’ impact on the environment too.

Free business energy use audits

Many state governments and even energy companies offer free energy audits for small businesses, as does the Federal Government through its Business Energy Advice Program.

The program is open to any business with between six and 20 employees (or between zero and five if your business is affected by drought). An independent business expert will review your operation and provide a consultation via face-to-face or over the phone advising on where you could make energy savings and how you could better manage your energy. You can also get advice on accessing different grants to help reduce the upfront cost of installing more energy-efficient appliances.

Getting a better energy deal

As well as reducing your energy usage, small businesses can save plenty by shopping around for the best energy deal. A 2018 study by energy comparison company Make It Cheaper reviewed their data to find 78% of small businesses could switch to cheaper plans if they compared rates and discounts.

In fact, the study found small businesses would save an average of more than $1100 a year by switching to a more competitive electricity plan (though that figure varied widely across different regions of Australia).

You can check how your energy bill stacks up against similar businesses by visiting Check Your Energy Spend, a Federal Government service that benchmarks business energy bills.

Meanwhile, the government’s Energy Made Easy site makes it simple to compare offerings from different retailers.