Top 10 Energy Management Mistakes—and How to Avoid Them

Energy management is full of booby traps that waste time and obscure progress. The good news: most are avoidable with simple habits. Here are ten mistakes we see most often and straightforward ways to sidestep them.

Spot the pitfalls

1) Chasing absolute kWh without context: Big numbers are compelling but misleading. Always relate usage to drivers like hours, occupancy, or production.

2) Comparing unlike sites: A flagship HQ isn’t a warehouse—benchmark by cohort and purpose, not just size.

3) Weak baselines: If your “expected” line isn’t weather‑ and occupancy‑aware, you’ll mistake seasonality for savings.

4) Alert overload: Too many alarms create apathy. Cap open alerts per site and rank by £ impact.

5) Ignoring baseload: Night and weekend waste is the cheapest to fix—start there before exotic projects.

6) No ownership: Issues without named owners linger. Assign tasks and due dates.

7) One‑off heroics: Wins that aren’t documented won’t repeat. Turn fixes into playbooks.

8) Poor evidence: Screenshots in personal folders aren’t audit‑ready. Centralise artefacts with provenance.

9) Comfort blind spots: Savings that upset occupants get rolled back. Keep guardrails and sanity checks.

10) Waiting for perfect data: Perfection is a brake. Ship small improvements monthly and refine as you go.

Apply practical fixes

Build a lightweight EnPI model for each site, automate weather normalisation, and track a handful of intensities. Configure impact‑ranked alerts with clear remediation steps and owners. Create a shared playbook library for common measures—schedules, setpoints, resets—and keep each entry to one page so it’s usable in the plant room.

Introduce a weekly stand‑up with three questions: what shipped, what saved, what’s blocked. This cadence uncovers bottlenecks early and keeps focus on outcomes rather than activity.

Sustain improvements

Lock in gains with routine: monthly M&V spot checks, quarterly playbook refreshes, and a visible leaderboard of site adoption and verified savings. Centralise evidence for audits and storytelling—before/after charts, action logs, and change approvals—so good work gets recognised and survives turnover.

Over a year, these habits compound into lower bills, lower carbon, and fewer surprises. The best teams don’t avoid mistakes by luck—they design systems that make the right thing the easy thing.