Calculating how efficient your heating system is.

Every business needs heating but often it can be one of the biggest drains of cash especially during the colder months. It is important to every business owner to keep energy bills as low as possible whilst ensuring their employees are kept at a comfortable temperature. This is why it is important to understand how to calculate your heat efficiency in order to become more cost effective. Here we have simple and easy guide to understanding how to calculate how much you are spending on your electric heating.

The first step is to find out how much you are paying per unit of electricity, this information will be available to you on your electric bill. If you are struggling to find it, you can simply call your energy supplier and they will quickly be able to provide you with these figures.

Once you have this figure, the next step is to find out how much input power your heating system is using. This will be measured in kW and is usually found on the information detailed on the side of your heater itself.

You will then need to multiply these two together so (input power in kW x the price of your electricity per hour in kW). This figure should give you an estimate of the hourly running costs of your heating system. As an example, if you were to pay 6p per kWh and you are running a 4kW heating system, you would need to multiple 6p x 4kW x 1 hour to come up with how much it is costing you each hour.

With this number, you will then be able to estimate the daily costs of your system by multiplying this number (the cost per hour) by how many number you have the system running in the working day. You will also be able to estimate monthly and yearly running costs by multiplying the daily cost number by the number of days you will be using the heating system for within that period of time.

Having these figures can help you as a business owner to better understand how efficient your heating system is and therefore to better understand your energy bills. This knowledge might help you figure out if its now time to have a new and more energy efficient heating system installed if you feel that you are paying out large sums of money for a sub-par system. Equally, it may help if you are looking to become a more carbon neutral company and become CTS (Carbon Trust Standard) certified. This type of certification not only enhances your reputation by differentiating your brand but it also has the ability to make your business not only more attractive to prospective customers but also to shareholders. By focusing on driving this awareness of your environmental credentials among shareholders, prospective customers and your staff you will garner recognition as an independently-verified environmentally responsible organisation.