If you’ve already put the advice in the basic energy conservation post to good use and still need to find more ways to save money, then it is time to take a good look at how you use energy and figure out a plan for maximum energy efficiency.

In this case, energy efficiency can be defined as the amount of benefit you get out of a particular energy sink in comparison to the amount of energy you pay for in order to run it. For this reason, you should already have seen energy efficiency rise greatly through the implementation of the basic energy conservation plan.

However, now it is time to take it to the next level. You can do things like alternating different rows of lights so that the whole store is illuminated but you are using fewer lights at any given time to get that job done. This not only allows you to save energy, but it also preserves your light bulbs and extends their period of use.

If you take a look at how your light bulbs are arranged in the business, it should be easy enough to figure out different combinations of light bulbs that provide adequate illumination to the whole store. In most cases, a standard grid of light bulbs can provide three or four different combinations that you can rotate through one each day, using each combination for a third or a quarter of the day.

This is just one of many different intermediate techniques you can use to ensure that your energy use goes down while simultaneously increasing energy efficiency.