How to reduce your gym’s energy usage

Lots of the popular gyms are now switching to a 24/7 approach for their gym’s opening times. While this gives an added level of flexibility for your members, it can drive up your energy consumption. This will have a knock-on effect on your gym’s energy bills. But what can you do to slim down on your gym’s energy usage and bills?

To make life more convenient for members, most gyms operate on a 24/7 opening time to make it as easy as possible for their members to squeeze a workout in. However, this can often lead to incredibly high usage. With hundreds of different pieces of equipment, showers, lighting, and music, it’s likely that there will always be some form of electronic item turned on.

While energy prices are starting to decrease, high rates are still common. Back in winter, Nuffield Health told ITV that they were turning off 72 spa pools until Spring to cut back on their energy bills. Better Gyms also said they would be lowering their pool temperatures by 1C on average in each site to cut down their bills. This combination of high rates and high usage has the potential to be a problem for gyms up and down the country.

If you’re open 25/7 but your members are using the gym less at certain times, you could have lights switched on when you don’t need them to be. Can you switch to motion sensor lighting in your changing rooms or your staff offices? This could be an easy switch, making sure that you’re not using energy when you don’t need to be. By preventing any unnecessary energy consumption, you can cut down on your gym’s energy bills.

If you have quieter periods during your gym’s operations, a reshuffle of the equipment could help you cut down on your usage and energy bills. Could you move some of the equipment into a different area of the gym and turn these machines off during off peak hours? You’ll need to find the balance between keeping members happy and reducing your usage, so you can’t switch all your equipment off. However, having a small area that you can switch off instead of leave on standby could help you reduce your usage.

It’s also a good idea to look into your equipment. Older equipment will take more energy to run than newer, frequently maintained equipment. Switching all of your equipment could be costly if done all at once. So, could you slowly swap out some of the most popular equipment to one that uses less energy to run? This means that the equipment used constantly isn’t consuming as much energy as before. You could even swap to equipment that generates energy for you. SportArt launched a treadmill that can generate up to 200 watts of electricity per hour. They estimate that a circuit of ten machines could save a gym £1,300 a year.

With long opening hours, it can be easy for the bills to build up. Therefore, checking your HVAC systems could be an easy way to cut down on your gym’s energy usage. Ensuring that your HVAC systems undergo regular maintenance to ensure that they’re working correctly. If not, they could be working harder than they need to when regulating your gym’s temperature. This is another way of making sure that you’re only using energy when you absolutely need to.