Not only is reducing your club’s carbon footprint important for the environment, but it can also save you money on your bowling centre energy bills, too. By switching to more energy-efficient means of powering your club, you’ll rely less on power from the grid.
If you can prove to your new energy provider that you’ve implemented eco-friendly initiatives, they’ll potentially offer you a better energy deal. Plus, if you can continue to prove to your supplier that you’re using less energy throughout the year, your billing is likely to be reduced further.
To make your bowling club more energy efficient, try these tips:
Solar panels
Solar panels may be a huge investment to make, but they definitely provide you with long-term energy savings. If you’ve got several bowling rinks to provide power for, you need an energy-efficient solution.
Doncaster Bowls Club recently installed 50 kW solar panels on the roof of their club. This has reduced their carbon footprint massively. It also ensures that the club will save around £230,000 over the next 20 years in energy costs.
While you’d need plenty of money to cover the initial costs, a solar panel installation would make you less reliant on power from the grid. Over time, the amount of money you save will pay for the solar panels several times over.
Insulation
One of the biggest costs of keeping your bowling club running through the winter is heating. Given that indoor bowling greens take place inside a large hall, it can sometimes be difficult to heat this space effectively and efficiently. If you struggle to keep the hall warm enough, you should consider investing in quality insulation.
Check the walls of your bowling club and see if they could do with extra insulation. Also, consider making your exit doors automatic, to ensure that they are kept closed when not in use. All of this would contribute to ensuring the maximum amount of heat is kept indoors. With that, you’ll be able to turn your boiler off more often.
Low heating
Even with insulation, you’ll likely have to turn on the heating occasionally. When you do, make sure it’s set to a moderate, eco-friendly temperature. The ideal temperature depends entirely on the size of your hall. However, setting it somewhere in the region of 20ºC should be sufficient.
Half-hour meter reading
If you don’t use your bowling club every day, investing in a half-hour meter reading could be a good idea. Half-hour meter readings are designed to provide your energy supplier with a more accurate idea of how much energy you’re spending.
Instead of sending your supplier a meter reading once a month, a half-hour meter reader sends updates once every half hour. This allows your supplier to better understand how much energy you use from day to day. With a better idea of your spending, your provider will be able to offer you a price that more accurately reflects your usage.
Energy-efficient lighting
One surefire way of saving money would be to invest in energy-efficient lighting. Your indoor bowling club is likely required to have lighting on all day. Normally, the indoor bowling green is in a big hall. This green runs about 40 metres on each side. In addition to this, you’ve got observation spaces running in front of each side of the green.
Regardless of how much spectator space you’ve got, all indoor bowling halls are expansive. You need plenty of lighting to keep the game visible and the players safe. So, you need to make sure your lights are as energy efficient as possible.
If you haven’t already, you need to make the switch to LED lighting. LED lighting is around 80% more energy efficient than fluorescent lighting. This is because 95% of the energy used goes into the actual lights, with an energy wastage of just 5%.
They also require less energy to run, which increases their lifespan far beyond that of fluorescent bulbs. LEDs can last as long as 100,000 hours, while some fluorescent bulbs don’t even last for a quarter of that amount of time.
Presence detectors
Installing presence detectors will ensure that lights switch off automatically when you leave the bowling hall, bathroom, or catering space. This way, even if someone forgets to turn the light off, you won’t be charged extra for lost energy.
At the same time, you’re providing yourself and your members with a safe level of lighting whenever it’s needed. Club members won’t have to worry about locating light switches, as they’ll come on automatically.