COVID-19 Impacts And Retailers Look For Solutions To Recoup

The economic slowdown that retail faces may still impact significantly, and retail chains need all the tools at their disposal to preserve the bottom line. After putting in place the measures to protect store associates and customer safety, retail must contend with how to recover from losses - and considerable savings can come from cutting back on energy spend across locations.

Retail During Coronavirus 

During events where store traffic is significantly reduced and there are higher than average staff shortages, corporate can go through the process of identifying where energy use can be pulled back to save money without affecting comfort across specific locations. 

Management and facility managers may ask:

• Can we shut down equipment earlier than we currently do?
• Can we adjust our lighting loads by leaving the marketing lights on so that everyone knows we are open yet still allow enough light to sell product?
• Accomplished by either dimming lights or turning off non-essential lights (i.e., every other row, focal highlights, etc.) in a location(s).
• Can we adjust temperatures up and down at a minute's notice to either manage health concerns or save energy in one location or all? 
• How can we ensure we are cycling equipment to minimize runtimes and save peak or kWh? 
• Can we use customer tracking information to see when we can save based on foot traffic?  

A lot of these things can be pre-set (and managed remotely) through building automation systems so that you can implement them readily when you need them. And energy management systems that can automate and improve efficiency across building automation systems can reduce energy spend enterprise-wide. 

LEARN HOW: Optimizing buildings for COVID to Increase Comfort & Safety

Energy Savings Best Practice

Every business is different in their needs and decision making, so it is essential to make sure you are informed to protect your specific business assets. It cannot be overstated that your relationships with your key vendors are precious. Vendors are susceptible to the same issues that any catastrophe brings, so you need to understand what is happening with them.  

With or without the Coronavirus issue, the ROI on PhoenixET's energy management solution is impressive. Our energy optimization is achieved through the continuous manipulation of a variety of energy conservation measures, including set-point manipulation, economizer resets, load cycling, load rolling, 24/7 drift and more.

When things move quickly, knowing your vendor can react fast and reliably is critical. And PhoenixET is fully prepared to handle our customer's needs across portfolios in times of disruption.  

With PhoenixET, customers can:

• Manage 100% of their fleet on one platform with bi-directional command capability
• Gain a full enterprise listing of locations & schedules
• Reduce workloads and improve response times to on-site issues 
• Allocate resources to strategically management of location rather than being reactive 
• Establish benchmarks and measure building performance for ROI and environmental reporting

We help retail and grocery chains control, manage, and monitor assets such as HVAC, lighting, refrigeration, industrial, and consumer-facing machines to do smart things such as alert, measure, and command to automatically correct or predict the need for service.

We enable retailers, grocery stores, universities, theaters, and many other industries to save on energy by providing best-in-class software that monitors and controls assets with no additional hardware. 

To discuss your energy priorities with a member of our team, or to schedule a demo, please click below.

Additional Resources

4 Common Myths of Energy Conservation in Building Management

Adaptive Energy Management Guide

Energy Management for Grocery Stores

Building Management Technologies Guide

Are You Managing Your Energy Spend?