When it comes to reducing overhead costs and optimizing efficiency, most businesses focus on big ticket items like real estate, inventory, and payroll. However, overlooking something as fundamental as your electrical wiring methods can cost you more than you think. Here are some innovative yet overlooked wiring techniques that could unlock major savings for your business.
Consolidate Your Power Sources
Most buildings have electrical panels and circuits spread out across multiple locations. This redundant design is intended for safety, but also wastes a ton of copper wire. Consolidating your power sources into a single, thoughtfully wired panel can drastically reduce wiring needs. This saves on upfront materials and ongoing energy loss from excessive wire resistance. Just be sure consolidated panels have adequate capacity and redundancy to avoid outages.
Use Lower Voltage Wiring
Electrical code requires thick, high voltage wiring for many applications. But with lower voltage DC circuits, you can use smaller, cheaper wiring. Low voltage LED lights, battery powered electronics, and brushless DC motors are perfect examples. Carefully using lower voltage wiring where possible can compound savings from consolidation. Safety is paramount though - consult an electrician to ensure your critical 120/240V AC power remains robust.
Eliminate Unneeded Conductors
Many wiring systems contain multiple active conductors plus spares for future expansion. For example, 3-phase AC power typically uses 4 conductors. Evaluate your actual needs, and remove unneeded wires from existing cable runs. You can repurpose removed wires for other circuits. Just take care to maintain proper wire ratings and isolation for their new use.
Use Lower Cost Cabling
Electrical wiring comes in many types - solid core, stranded, shielded, plenum rated. While premium cables have benefits, standard copper building wire works fine for most needs at a fraction of the price. Romex style NM-B cable is a cost effective option for branch circuits. Carefully examine where premium cabling is worth the extra cost vs savings from value engineered products.
Re-use Old Wiring
Before running new wires, see if you can repurpose existing runs that are no longer needed. As technology evolves, wiring for old phone, security, and computer networks often becomes obsolete. Rather than abandoning place, use abandoned cabling as wiring pull strings, or directly as new circuit conductors if rated properly. Just be cautious of potential fire code issues with outdated wiring.
Go Wireless
The most radical wiring reduction strategy is cutting the cord entirely. Modern wireless solutions like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy, RFID, and IoT networks enable automation and data connections without wires. Wireless power transfer is even emerging to replace electrical power cables. Of course, radio solutions have limitations like interference, range, and power delivery capacity that wired connections avoid. Use wireless technology judiciously where it provides the most benefit.
By carefully examining wiring needs, consolidating power distribution, right-sizing circuit voltage, eliminating unneeded conductors, using value engineered cabling, re-using old wiring, and applying wireless technology, most businesses can realize major cost savings on electrical systems. Just be sure to have licensed electricians handle modifications to avoid safety hazards. Spending a bit upfront to optimize your wiring can unlock dramatic savings over the lifecycle of your building.