Business Energy Action Services

MEFL's Business Program has worked extensively across a range of commercial and industrial small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to identify and reduce energy consumption, achieving effective energy and cost savings. MEFL can provide information, project management, training and detailed technical advice to retail businesses, traders associations and industry bodies.

MEFL has a range of information and services available free to businesses in Moreland to help them understand their energy use and identify potential areas for energy savings.

Please contact Bruce Thompson

Business Energy Action Project
In this pioneering project MEFL worked with small and medium sized enterprises (SME) across Melbourne's northern metropolitan region. Through education and assistance the project helped these businesses to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to put recommended changes into practice. A series of training programs were run for business and local government representatives, at least 35 business energy audits were conducted and more than 15 businesses made changes that improved their energy-efficiency.

The project identified an average 15% savings potential which had a payback period of less than 3 years.

Across the 15 businesses, 10% savings resulted in a yearly of around 80 tonnes of CO2 reduction. Business participation was encouraged with offers of 'dollar-for-dollar' funding, technical and project-management assistance. The program has now developed a series of training modules and common energy-saving recommendations with the view to expanding into other municipalities.

The Business Energy Actions were coordinated by the Moreland Energy Foundation working with the municipalities of Darebin, Whittlesea, Moreland, Hume, Banyule and the shire of Nillumbik, who together form the Northern Alliance for Greenhouse Action (NAGA).

Case Study: Dairy Queen

The Dairy Queen ice-creamery and take-away cafe is successfully saving $1600 a year after taking action on energy consumption. Last year Moreland Energy Foundation worked with the Glenroy business to identify cost-effective ways of reducing a $12,000 a year power bill. MEFL found that 22% of the electricity bill was spent on running 4 separate drinks fridges, a kitchen fridge and a cool-room.

A grant of $1,600 was made available under the NAGA-supported Business Energy Action program toward replacing these appliances with a new energy-efficient display fridge and cool-room. The measures more than halved the refrigeration consumption. A further $3000 savings can be made at Dairy Queen by converting their electric fryers (using up to 50% of their energy) to gas.

Case Study: Sahara Pizza

An initial energy assessment found that nearly 40% of the Sahara restaurant's electricity use was in lighting, with 60% of this from halogen down lights. MEFL recommended changes to improve the quality of lighting in the cafe and reduce overall energy use from lighting.

The 50W halogen downlights throughout the cafe were replaced with new 35W OSRAM halogen downlights which output the same amount of light but provide 25% energy savings (including transformer costs). The fluorescent tubes were replaced with efficient 'quadphosphor' tubes which output around 20% more light than a standard fluorescent tube. The resulting extra illumination meant that the number of tubes in the cafe could be halved. The new tubes were also a different colour tone so they more closely matched the warm yellow tone of the halogen downlights.

As well as the changes to lighting, MEFL recommended switching some refrigeration units off overnight. As Sahara is on a peak-only tariff, the savings from turning off just one soft drink fridge overnight add up to over $80 per year. This was achieved by fitting an inexpensive timer switch which turns the fridge off at 11pm and back on again at 7am to ensure that drinks are cold in time for opening. Total expected savings from the changes are over 7 tonnes of CO2 and over $630 per year which represents an 8% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for Sahara Pizza.