The Cost Hiding in Your Electricity Baseline, and How to Take It Out

Most organisations treat their electricity baseline as a fixed cost. It rarely is. A share of what every commercial site pays for is energy that does no useful work, and a load survey can turn that waste into a guaranteed, site-specific saving.

Why the baseline matters

When finance teams build a budget, the electricity line is usually carried forward from last year, adjusted for tariff and not much else. That makes sense for the price per unit, which is largely outside an operator’s control. It makes much less sense for the number of units, because a meaningful share of them are lost inside the building before they do any work.

That loss is structural. It is built into how modern equipment interacts with the supply, so it recurs every day, every month and every year until something addresses it. Unlike a tariff, it does not fall away on renewal, and unlike behavioural waste, it cannot be fixed with a poster by the light switch.

The practical point is timing. A survey carried out ahead of a budget cycle, a peak trading season or a planned shutdown window lets the savings be planned in rather than discovered later. Whenever that moment falls in your year, it is the right one to challenge the baseline.

The hidden cost in your supply

The patented enPact FilterPro is a site-wide electrical power alignment device, and it targets waste that most energy programmes never reach. Every commercial site draws a three-phase supply from the grid, and that supply is rarely as clean as the equipment on it would like.

Modern loads such as motors, compressors, variable-speed drives and LED drivers distort the supply and draw current that is billed but does no useful work. UK supply voltage also tends to run higher than equipment needs, so plants work harder, run hotter and wear faster than it should. None of this shows up as a line on the invoice. It simply sits inside the kWh total.

enPact FilterPro is fitted at the site’s electrical incomer, or at a sub-distribution board for the compact version, and aligns the supply so the same useful work is done with less electricity. It acts on the whole site at once, so there is no need to replace equipment, retrain staff or change how the building is run.

The headline is straightforward: up to 18% off total site electricity consumption, with a guaranteed saving that is typically 6- 7%, confirmed by a load survey of your own site. There is also a compact version for refrigeration cabinets and smaller feeds, delivering up to 10 per cent on refrigeration applications.

It is worth being clear that this is not voltage optimisation. Voltage optimisation is a different technology with a different mechanism, and it is often the comparison buyers reach for first. enPact FilterPro addresses the wider range of losses across inductive loads, not voltage alone.

Where cooling fits

The patented enPact Refrigeration & Cooling system is a compressor optimisation system for refrigeration loads, and on many food and hospitality sites it is where the largest single saving sits. Refrigeration runs around the clock, and peak trading, whether a festive season or a summer heatwave, puts walk-ins, cellars, display cabinets and chillers under the most pressure exactly when the business can least afford a failure.

A conventional refrigeration system keeps its compressor running right up to the set temperature, even though the evaporator already holds cooling that has not yet reached the space. enPact Refrigeration & Cooling reads temperatures at several points around the circuit, recognises that stored cooling and stops the compressor earlier. The set temperature is still held; it is simply reached using cooling the system has already produced.

Because the compressor is usually the biggest electrical load in the system, the saving flows straight through: typically 20 to 45 per cent on refrigeration loads under normal operating conditions, with 20 per cent guaranteed. Installation typically takes under an hour per unit, and the system is non-invasive, so removing it returns the equipment to its original state. That makes it suitable for leased and customer-owned assets alike.

The two products stack. enPact FilterPro acts on the whole electrical supply and enPact Refrigeration & Cooling acts on individual cooling equipment, so the savings are additive rather than overlapping. For any site with a significant cooling load, the enPact suite together is usually the stronger business case.

What the evidence shows

The results below come from live sites, measured through the enPact monitoring platform rather than projected on paper. Where operators are not named, it is because the results are reported under client confidentiality.

Site	Technology	Verified result
Sysco, global foodservice distributor	enPact FilterPro and enPact Refrigeration & Cooling	22% across refrigeration, cooling and site-wide electrical
Whitbread / Premier Inn	enPact FilterPro, estate roll-out	12% average total site saving
National UK hotel chain, 24/7 site	enPact FilterPro	11.2% total site reduction against 7% quoted; 6.4-month payback
National UK pub and bar chain, 10 sites	enPact FilterPro and enPact Refrigeration & Cooling	9.3% average across the portfolio; every site delivered a reduction
New England Seafood	enPact Refrigeration & Cooling, process refrigeration	41.5% on refrigeration

Two patterns are worth drawing out. First, in the hotel example the verified result comfortably exceeded the figure quoted at survey stage, which is what a conservative guarantee should produce. Second, the strongest whole-site results come where both products are deployed together on sites with heavy refrigeration and kitchen loads, which describes most hospitality and food operations at their busiest.

How it works in practice

The route from first conversation to verified saving is short, and it is designed around sites that cannot afford downtime.

1. Load survey. We assess the site’s electrical and refrigeration profile before any figure is quoted. The survey is what turns the published range into your own number.
2. Findings and guaranteed saving. We set a guaranteed saving for each site: a minimum of 20 per cent on treated refrigeration and cooling loads, and a survey-confirmed enPact FilterPro figure, typically around 6 to 7 per cent of total site electricity.
3. Installation by accredited partners. Qualified electrical engineers from our distribution partners carry out the work. enPact FilterPro needs a brief shutdown for the final connection; enPact Refrigeration & Cooling fits unit by unit with no operational disruption.
4. Live monitoring. Every installation reports through the enPact monitoring platform, giving you and us a shared, evidenced view of performance. The same data supports carbon and Scope 3 reporting.

The guarantee protects your payback. The guaranteed percentage sets the payback period. If verified savings fall short over that period, with the equipment operating correctly, the site materially unchanged and monitoring live, we optimise the system at our own cost first. If a shortfall remains, we reduce the project cost so your payback still lands where the guaranteed saving would have put it.

Five questions for your estates and finance teams

Whatever the time of year, these questions will show quickly whether there is a case worth surveying:

1. Which sites carry the heaviest refrigeration, kitchen and HVAC loads during their busiest trading periods?
2. Do we have 12 months of consumption data for those sites, so a baseline can be set quickly?
3. Is next year’s electricity budget built on this year’s consumption, or on what that consumption should be?
4. Which sites have planned shutdown or maintenance windows coming up, when a brief electrical shutdown would be easiest to schedule?
5. How are we evidencing carbon reduction for Scope 3 and customer reporting, and would verified, metered savings strengthen it?

If those questions point to even a handful of sites, a load survey is the natural next step. It costs you nothing in disruption and gives you a site-specific, guaranteed figure to take into budget discussions.

Talk to us

Emissis brings the patented enPact suite to hospitality, food, manufacturing and corporate real estate operators across the UK, Europe, US and South East Asia. To arrange a load survey or talk through your estate:

enquiries@emissis.com · emissis.com · 01642 049024