How Can The Retail Sector Ensure Sustainability With Energy Management?

Retailers are looking for opportunities that can improve their profit margins, reduce unnecessary operational costs, and importantly, bring in sustainable results for the future. They also have to make sure that they fulfill the corporate social responsibility as it affects their brand images. How? Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the actions of their favorite brands. On the other hand, stakeholders expect transparency in environmental and operational sustainability.

The rising energy consumption is showing alarming signs to many retailers today. Retail buildings consume around energy worth $20 billion every year. If they continue to make use of energy at this scale, the consequences are not good! If advanced technologies are leveraged, the energy consumption in the retail sector can reduce by $3 billion per year. Now, that’s something that demands the attention of the retailers!

With the help of energy management, the retail sector can achieve sustainable goals, increase profit margins, mitigate risk, reduce the environmental impact of their operations, and beat market competition proactively.

The challenges faced by retail stores

The high amount of energy consumption is one of the major setbacks that the retail sector faces today. If you consider a grocery store, fashion outlet, multi-story building, or any other retail outlet, you’ll notice that lighting is on 24/7. It doesn’t matter whether the consumer is entering the store or not. Apart from lighting, HVAC, refrigeration, building controls are also responsible for high energy consumption in retail stores.

Not just this, retailers have access to an enormous amount of data and convert it into useful information for improved business performance. If the advanced tools and solutions are not adopted, it will be difficult for the retailers to process this information.

The list of retail disruptions does not just end here. Imagine the maintenance cost and energy consumption of the retail stores that operate 24 hours a day! Where refrigeration and lighting consume a high amount of energy, the other building operations, and outdated systems also add to the cost. If any equipment fails to perform just at the moment, the retailers also bear the unnecessary breakdown costs that only add to their hassle.

If retailers don’t have to bear the unnecessary maintenance and repair costs, they can use the same investment in improving customer experiences. What’s the core challenging part? Many retailers are still unaware of the benefits of the advanced technologies and the benefits they offer. Energy management is one of them. It allows retailers to intelligently use the energy that helps to achieve the sustainability goals and reduce carbon footprints. How? Let’s understand:

How does smart energy management drive efficiency in the retail sector?

Retail stores have to make sure that they are operating efficiently, leading to profitable results in the future. A well-designed and well-implemented energy management program can reduce energy costs by a whopping 10-30%. Let’s understand how:

1. Identify the energy consumption drivers in retail stores

To know the cause of excess energy consumption in retail stores, it’s necessary to identify the key drivers. Energy management maps out the processes in retail stores leading to this energy consumption pattern. If there are any energy leakages, the building owners and managers will immediately know about them. Especially when it comes to outdated equipment, it proves to be highly valuable.

The IoT-enabled sensors in stores not only optimize the energy consumption but also ensure the optimal temperature and HVAC conditions. What’s the benefit? Retailers do not have to compromise the convenience of the occupants to ensure energy efficiency.

2. Measure energy leakage

When retailers get a 360° view of energy consumption patterns in real-time, they can track and analyze the abnormal energy consumption by faulty devices. It minimizes the chances of wastage of energy and other resources, leading to an improved bottom line in the end.

When retailers prefer to use intelligent technologies to ensure predictive maintenance, EM helps them to fulfill this motive. It makes sure that HVAC systems are configured, lighting and power infrastructure are re-looked, improve customer experience, and minimize the cost of operations.

3. Monitor and control the retail operations

Measurement of energy parameters can help retailers to identify abnormalities on time. The powerful IoT technology gives rise to smart HVAC systems, lighting, refrigeration, and advanced sensors. When they are embedded in the retail store, the facility managers can monitor and control the energy consumption proactively. At the same time, they will trigger alerts in case of anomalies or any variations in electrical devices.

4. Ensure predictive maintenance of the equipment

The equipment breakdown is the major setback that retailers have to manage. They can save their time and efforts if they conduct predictive maintenance of the equipment.

The energy management tracks the consumption patterns over time and provides rich insights to the retailers. Predictive equipment maintenance goes one step ahead of EM. It predicts points of failure, the expected time period of failure, and triggers automatic real-time adjustments.

5. Prevent the risks of equipment breakdown

Energy management gives rich insights on energy usage, expected trends or patterns such as higher expected usage, days of week or hours of a day with higher consumption levels, black-out zones, and much more! In this way, retail operational executives can avoid the chances of operational deviations and optimally use energy.

Retail managers can also prevent the risk of equipment breakdown, know the pattern of device behavior, and ensure smooth operations.

Retailers can achieve sustainable goals with the help of energy management

Energy is a constantly growing expenditure for retailers across the globe. Fortunately, energy management helps retailers monitor, manage and control their energy consumption and minimize the associated carbon footprints up to a considerable extent. In short, achieving sustainable goals becomes easy with such progressive technologies.

Want to get the best IoT solutions for your retail store? Zenatix can help you out! We offer powerful IoT solutions to our clients so they will be able to bring efficiency to their facilities. Reap the benefits of technologically advanced solutions!