Commercial Blog

Demand for warehouse space in the UK is booming this year, as more of us turn to online shopping while the virus keeps us away from the high streets. The proportion of retail done online (which was already on the rise) has skyrocketed:

For most people, a trip to the shops is about picking up the weekly groceries, with rarely a concern for the huge amount of power needed to keep the building running and the food fresh.

As electricity bills rise, shop owners are keen to cut costs where they can. Here’s why we’d recommend solar panels for supermarkets to save money on energy and provide some energy independence.

Offices, shops, schools and other premises across the country have been shuttered or only partially open since the lockdown. In an undoubtedly difficult time, many organisations are looking to save money. This could be the perfect opportunity to look at improvements to your company’s energy use, investing in efficient technology to reduce your energy costs in the long term.

Here are a few things we can help with to improve energy efficiency:

Upgrading to LED lighting typically halves your lighting bill.

If you install lighting controls at the same time (occupancy sensors etc), you can reduce running costs by around 70%, particularly if half your office is empty, but all your lights are on.

Spirit Energy has this week launched an online LED Lighting Calculator to enable you to see very quickly how much energy, and money, you could save, and how long it would take a lighting upgrade to pay for itself.

Emergency lighting needs to be checked every month. Any repairs or remedial work must be carried out within a reasonable time and all changes must be recorded.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that a significant proportion of organisations do not regularly test and maintain their emergency lighting.

This is partly because standards have changed (BS 5266 was updated in 2016) and the relevant people may be behind the times. But it’s also because testing emergency lighting every month (and annually for a three hour test) is rather laborious and labour intensive, and therefore expensive.

The fines for non-compliance are even more expensive.

Installing the right test mechanism to make compliance easy is fundamental.

If your mains lighting failed what would you do? Evacuate? Stay put? Use the daylight coming through the skylights or the windows to keep working?

Many organisations have emergency lighting, but it's amazing how few employees/occupants know what the drill is if the lights fail.  A fire alarm going off sends a recognisable message to get out. In contrast, without a clearly communicated policy, normal lighting failing and emergency lighting coming on is more likely to spread confusion, particularly in an environment where carrying on 'normally' is possible without the mains electricity working.

Furthermore, we see quite a few buildings in which the emergency lighting and / or signage hasn't been brought up to regulations - primarily the 2016 updated standard BS 5266. 

Does your business comply with the following? If not you’re at risk of prosecution:

Spirit’s warehouse adjoins the warehouse of Primrose, the online gardening retailer. Our unit is full of solar panels, inverters, batteries, LED lights and exciting things like that.  Their unit is full of garden furniture, water features, awnings, wind spinners and all of the exciting things available at www.primrose.co.uk.

Earlier this year we were called in to upgrade the metal halide lights to LED.