Factory Heating Running Costs
A Full Breakdown
Rising energy costs have become a central concern for UK businesses. Fluctuating prices for gas and electricity have made it difficult to predict what the future holds – and what the impact on your finances could be.
Though energy prices are down from their late 2022 peak, they increased 12.6% in the second quarter of 2024, and 72% of businesses expect energy costs to impact their profits over the next two years. For factory owners, the concern is even more pronounced. Almost a third of manufacturers said energy prices were their biggest anticipated risk for 2024.
In this context, it’s imperative that businesses across the manufacturing sector grapple with the costs of running their factory heating system. In this post, we’ll look at factors that affect how much you’ll pay to keep your factory warm, as well as exploring four key ways to drive down your factory heating running costs.
The Challenges of Factory Heating
Let’s begin by taking a closer look at why rising energy costs are a particularly pressing issue for manufacturers.
At the heart of this issue is the very nature of factories. Put simply, factories are generally quite difficult to heat. There are several reasons why this is the case, including:
Factories are usually large, open spaces with high ceilings and few barriers or walls. This means your heaters must work overtime to maintain a consistent temperature, as well as leading to stratification problems when the heated air rises to the top of the building.
Factory employees are often engaged in extremely rigorous and physically demanding work for prolonged periods – not to mention the fact they’re obliged to wear heavy protective clothing. This can make temperature fluctuations a healthy and safety risk, as well as impacting productivity and increasing absenteeism.
Manufacturing processes can generate a range of harmful airborne substances. This not only makes it important that your factory heating system can contribute to air circulation and purification, but it also means your heaters may be subject to increased wear and tear.
In combination, these various issues make factory heating a major challenge. You may find yourself struggling with sky-high energy consumption leading to significant utility costs, as well as outsized expenditures on maintenance and repairs for your overtaxed heating system.
Setting aside the immediate costs, there are longer-term concerns you should be wary of when it comes to your factory heating system. Customers are increasingly making their purchasing decisions based on environmental and sustainability issues. In fact, recent research shows that they’re willing to pay almost 10% more for goods that are sustainably produced.
These shifting preferences have major implications across the supply chain, affecting businesses at every level. Most importantly, they mean that an energy-hungry factory heating system won’t just impact on your bottom line in the short term. If you’re not able to show you’re taking steps to reduce your carbon footprint, this could put you on the wrong side of an accelerating trend toward sustainability.
The question, then, is how factory owners and manufacturers can tackle their factory heating running costs. In the following sections, we’ll look at the key factors that affect how much it costs to run your factory heating system, before offering some strategies for lowering them.
What impacts Factory Heating running costs?
There are a range of factors that determine how much your factory heating system costs to run. The most fundamental of these, of course, is the wholesale cost of energy – something that, as we’ve all seen in recent years, is hard to predict and even harder to control. Any government taxes or levies will also have an impact.
Setting aside these fundamental factors, there are several specific features that can contribute to the running costs for your factory heating system. These can be separated into two categories, the first is related to the nature of your factory and its operations, while the second is related to the type of heating system you’re using.
As we mentioned above, factories are challenging to heat in part because they tend to be such large spaces. Given this, just how big your factory is will be core to the running costs of your heating system. However, it’s also important to consider the layout of your factory, including the size and location of any doors. If your factory has large shutter doors that are open much of the day, this will contribute to heat loss and drive-up costs.
Older factories will often be constructed from materials that do not effectively retain heat. Given the overall dimensions of most factories, this means there’s a substantial surface area through which heat can dissipate, further adding to your running costs.
The target temperature for your heating system will have a major impact on your energy costs – even a reduction of 2°C can significantly reduce your costs significantly. However, if your machinery or equipment needs a certain temperature to be maintained, this can rule out an easy way to reduce costs by lowering your thermostat.
If we turn to your factory heating system, the factors that affect its running costs include:
Whether you’re using a warm air heating system, radiant heating, far infrared heating, or some other heating solution, this will affect your running costs – particularly if the system isn’t well-suited to your space.
As of July 2024, gas costs roughly a quarter as much as electricity per kW hour – 6p versus 25p. As a result, if you’re using electricity to power your heating system, this will likely lead to higher overall running costs.
All gas heating appliances require annual gas-safe servicing by a registered engineer. However, an older heating system will be subject to more wear and tear, meaning you might need to call out a maintenance engineer or have it repaired more frequently, driving up your overall running costs.
Taken together, these six factors will largely determine the running costs of your factory heating system. However, unlike wholesale energy prices, many of these factors can be positively affected. As we’ll explain below, by ensuring your heating system is properly adapted for your space, you can secure significant savings.
Four ways to reduce your factory heating running costs
1. Choose the right heating system
There are several different ways to heat larger industrial premises, each of which will have its own benefits. Which heating system is right for you will depend on various factors and securing expert advice can be helpful when making a decision (see point 4 for more on this).
However, if your goal is to reduce running costs, two types of heating systems will generally offer the best results for factories:
Warm air heating. This involves using the heater fans to draw air in before passing it over a heat exchanger and distributing it evenly throughout your space using fans. Warm air heats the whole air space and removes hot and cold spots often associated with other types of heating, delivering a consistent and efficient form of heating.
If you choose a warm air option, it’s also important to consider the specific heaters you use. As in so many other areas, heating technology advances and cutting-edge appliances like the Winterwarm XR+, EH Electric air and HR condensing unit air heater can offer substantial efficiency benefits – which means reduced running costs.
Radiant heating. This works by transmitting infrared radiation from large gas-fired radiant tubes, Linear or U tube designs, to heat only objects or people within the throw of the heater – As radiant does not directly heat the air as a warm air heater would this make radiant a great solution for spot-heating localised areas in a larger space.
Finally, choosing a modern thermostatic control for your heating system can help bring running costs down even further. Newer systems have the ability to set the temperature within pre-defined time blocks, giving you more fine-grained control over your heating and making sure your not wasting energy heating an empty building unnecessarily.
2. Choose the right heating system
We mentioned above that thermal stratification is a key issue for large spaces like factories. If your factory has high ceilings, you might find that the lower parts of the space just won’t stay at a consistent temperature even with your heating system running continuously. Needless to say, this can have an enormous impact on your factory heating running costs, as your heaters burn energy trying to achieve an impossible task.
Thankfully, there is a simple solution to this common issue. Destratification involves installing fans just below the ceiling of the factory that will push warm air back down toward the ground. By preventing warm air from gathering near the ceiling, destratification can result in an up to 30% reduction in your energy costs.
3. Find Ways to Tackle Heat Loss
We noted above that, if your factory has large shutter doors that are kept open for prolonged periods, this can significantly contribute to your factory heating running costs through heat loss. Thankfully, there are several ways you can tackle this problem.
A highly effective solution is to install an air curtain. This fan-powered device blows a stream of air across an opening. This effectively produces an air seal separating inside from outside, significantly reducing heat loss while allowing staff and equipment to move freely through the doors.
An air curtain isn’t the only solution, however. If your factory has shutter doors that need to be opened and closed throughout the day, a relay switch can automatically turn off your heaters while the door is open. This will help prevent you from expending energy from heating air that is going to quickly escape through the open shutters.
4. Opt for a Bespoke Design
In many ways, this final tip is the most fundamental one. With all the decisions you make when it comes to your heating system, you need to keep in mind one simple thing: the direct, practical impact on your factory.
It’s an obvious point, but every single factory is different. From the size and layout of the building to the number of openings and the type of machinery in use, no two factories will have the same basic characteristics – and that means they won’t have the same heating requirements. This means there is no one-size-fits-all solution for reducing your running costs.
This is particularly important because the specific layout of your factory doesn’t just affect which heating system is best for you – it also determines whether you get the full benefits from whichever system you do end up choosing. The unfortunate truth is that even if you choose an energy-efficient heating system and opt for the latest heaters and advanced thermostatic controls, you won’t see benefits if the systems isn’t installed in a way that is tailored to your space.
Take a warm air heating system, for example. For this system to work optimally, these heaters need to be positioned effectively around your space. If you don’t have enough heaters, or they’re not installed in the most appropriate locations, they’ll have to expend a great deal of energy to maintain the desired temperature. This will significantly undermine your efforts to lower costs and may result in your heaters wearing out more quickly.
Ultimately, adopting a fully bespoke approach to your factory heating system is the best way to ensure you can reduce running costs and achieve long-term benefits for your business.
OKEL Can help Tackle your Factory Heating Challenges
Factory heating running costs are a major concern for businesses – and understandably so. After years of volatile energy prices and ongoing uncertainty over what the future holds, the prospect of an ongoing hit to profits is one that should be taken seriously. That’s why it’s essential to understand the factors that affect your factory heating running costs and identify ways to reduce them.
Here at OKEL, we’ve spent more than a decade helping clients across the industrial and manufacturing sectors to adopt energy-efficient, cost-effective heating solutions. With a commitment to providing fully bespoke solutions and long-standing relationships with leading manufacturers, our team can deliver significant cost savings for your factory. To learn more about how we can help you, get in touch with us in the form below.