As a dairy producer, you know the importance of keeping costs down wherever possible. While some costs simply cannot be reasonably cut, there are steps you can take to reduce others. A fantastic area to look at for cutting cost is energy use. While you can’t zero out this cost, you can certainly use methods to reduce your overall energy expenditure.
Use High-Efficiency Equipment
While newer equipment certainly has an up-front cost, it can actually save you money in the long-run. Choosing industrial boilers that are more energy-efficient, for example, can save you quite a bit of money on your energy costs every year. If you can switch over the bulk of your equipment to high-efficiency models, you’ll start to see net savings in time.
Choose High-Conductivity Materials
This might sound a bit on the technical side, but it’s really not. Materials that better conduct heat and electricity are able to use energy more efficiently, which in turn brings down your overall costs. If you’re looking for any material that needs to be heated, for example, you’ll just need to look at what it’s made of. If the material is more conductive, you know that you’ll expend less energy (and thus less money) to heat it up properly. Invest in these materials so that you can use a minimal amount of energy to achieve your goals.
Use Renewable Energy
Renewable energy sources are perhaps the best thing you can use to keep your costs down. Does this mean that you can move your entire operation off the grid? At this point, probably not. You can, however, make use of solar or wind energy in some aspects of your business to bring down your overall electrical costs. Even using solar panels in a barn to run your lights can have a huge impact on what you spend every year.
Keep Up with Maintenance
Finally, make sure that you keep up with your regular maintenance. If a machine has moving parts and it’s not well-maintained, it’s going to have to work harder to do its job. That increased amount of work means more energy, which means that you have to spend more money. While maintenance does have associated monetary and time costs, they’re nothing compared to what you’ll end up spending when you operate a poorly-maintained machine.
It’s not that hard to find ways to reduce energy costs in the dairy business. Use the right tools and the right methods so that you cut costs overall. The money you save here can be reinvested into your business and spent in the places that really matter.
Meghan Belnap is a freelance writer who enjoys spending time with her family. She loves being in the outdoors and exploring new opportunities whenever they arise. Meghan finds happiness in researching new topics that help to expand her horizons. You can often find her buried in a good book or out looking for an adventure. You can connect with her on Facebook right here and Twitter right here.