3 Things to Consider When Choosing a Gas Provider

When considering options in utility services for your business, consider three crucial questions: how does your company’s energy spending fit into your total budget picture; how does your gas provider measure up to competing companies in the market; and how can your company realize noticeable savings in the energy services budget?  Each element of the big picture is important when assessing the needs and costs of energy for your company.  As big a part of your budget as your spending on rent or marketing in many cases, an energy intensive business, especially, will need to closely watch the ways it spends its money on energy, as this item of the budget can quickly grow with uncontrollable factors like market fluctuations in resource availability or it may vary with options that can be changed, such as choices in service provider, among other variables that figure into the final equation of how much you spend for energy use at work.

Thing One: Measure Up Your Use
Look over your company’s utility bills for your gas provider, electric service, telephone, web access, and more, and you will see that the amount you spend on keeping the flow of energy and resources pulsing through your business is a big part of the overhead that you have to meet on a monthly basis, just to stay in business and functioning.  But, knowing how the money is spent and on which portion of the energy services that your company needs to survive and thrive and to continue to grow is a big part of the wise use picture that can help you direct your energy budget in a positive direction.  Understand your company’s energy use across all utilities, and then analyze it divided down by each type of energy use, be it natural gas, fuel oil, electricity or whichever.
Thing Two: Measure Up Your Utility Companies
Next, you will need to know if you are getting the most value out of your utility dollars spent, by comparing the energy services and support your present utility company provides as compared to competing companies that may provide the same services individually, or bundled in a different arrangement to make an attractive package for your energy needs. Shop around as much as your circumstances will allow, for better rates or a more complete package of services that will fill your needs best.  Some utility markets allow for reviewing the options more thoroughly than others, but it always pays to be aware of what choices your company has in selecting energy providers, and to shop around for ways to save money.
Thing Three: Add Up Ways To Save
When you are confident that you know where your company is spending its utility budget, and that the choices you are making in companies that supply everything from the electricity for the lights and computers and machinery to the gas provider for the furnace and more, it is time to do the math and calculate where and how you are going to find the savings to make some noticeable changes in the energy equation at your company.
From big ticket items like investment in more efficient equipment or machinery where appropriate and where the ROI will be adequate to support a new high-efficiency furnace or on-demand water heater, for example, to more mundane matters like turning down thermostats and clicking off lights when you leave a room, the small savings across a good size company can add up to valuable incentive to improve.
Whatever the specifics in your company’s energy use equation, it makes sense to consider the variables as individual pieces of a larger puzzle, so that you can see where you may be spending too much, and where you can realize cost savings by added efficiency or other internal efforts within the company to maximize resources.  Energy use is a constant, in life and in business, but that does not necessarily imply that it is inflexible or static amount.  Just the opposite, left unchecked, energy use will grow if allowed the latitude to expand, as market factors of energy resources fluctuate and rise, and new machinery and equipment continue to place demands on the company’s power infrastructure.  But properly monitored and checked on a regular basis, energy services need not be the monster that consumes your company’s budget entirely.  With constant vigilance, the monster can be tamed.
About the author: 
Please feel free to contact Ella Gray at [email protected].