Gaining Store-Level Insights to Help Reduce Your Energy Use

Companies worldwide are establishing sustainability goals – typically focused on reducing energy consumption thus improving their carbon footprint. For multisite retailers, this imperative can be a two-fold challenge: they need to maintain an optimal shopping experience yet may lack store-level insights into energy use. Stores need to create a place that not only highlights merchandise but is also inviting and attractive to shoppers. This means using the right lighting and making sure the temperature is consistently comfortable. This can use a lot of energy.

So how can retailers gain store-level insights into energy consumption while delivering an optimal experience to their customers? The answer is better building management tools.

Retailers cannot track what they cannot see

Retail and franchise stores often rely on various equipment to deliver their business outcomes. One of the biggest culprits of energy consumption for retail stores is the HVAC system, which can account for over 40% of a business’s energy use ^[i]

Optimizing and driving down the energy use of an HVAC system can be difficult to achieve if retailers depend on residential equipment, like thermostats, to manage their energy consumption. 

In some cases, retail stores manually collect insights from a regional operations team to figure out the optimal setting for their HVAC system or to gather data on equipment that requires maintenance to them help achieve greater efficiencies.

Operating this way can prove to be costly and time consuming. It can also keep a store from accurately fine tuning its equipment to create both an optimal retail experience and reduce energy use. 

Using cloud or remote building management to help gather the insights you need 

Many retail stores might feel like they’re caught in conundrum: a traditional building management system (BMS) may be too complex and residential equipment doesn’t provide the right insights.

The answer is using a tailored approach and cloud-based solution that can offer retailers both automation to track performance and optimization capabilities to meet operational needs. This can include automating lighting, heating and cooling schedules that align with a store’s hours of operation as well as monitoring asset performance from coolers to coffee machines.

Installing a cloud-based solution, like Honeywell Remote Building Manager, can be easy to deploy and configure with little to no interruption to a business; they are cost effective, easy to use and scale as operations grow. 

Monitoring and managing down to an asset level 

With a cloud-based building manager in place, multisite retailers can also consider using advanced software control solutions to help monitor, control and optimize energy use down to an asset level.

These solutions can help retailers monitor lighting and HVAC system performance more closely, allowing real-time adjustments, improving operational efficiency and tracking against sustainability goals. Sensors can also be used for refrigeration systems to help control and maintain product inventory quality while also managing energy use.

These types of systems can also provide energy models, predictive analytics, and 24/7 system monitoring to help increase the lifespan of store equipment.

Implementing advanced technologies and sensors can assist with cost savings, particularly during non-operating hours when temperatures can be adjusted to conserve energy.

Moving toward a more energy efficient future 

You can’t move closer to a more sustainable future without better understanding your store’s energy use. Ready now solutions can help you better meet corporate sustainability goals without sacrificing how your consumers experience your store’s retail space.

As we continue to see businesses adopt sustainability practices as part of their ESG strategy, multisite retailers will need the proper insights to help deliver on these goals. Investing in technologies, like Honeywell’s Remote Building Manager, can help reduce a retailer’s energy use. Honeywell can help you with a tailored approach for small and medium buildings. Contact one of our experts today to learn more.

^[i] PG&E, How Retail Businesses Can Easily Reduce Energy Consumption and Costs, Pauravi Shah, Accessed August 2023