About NSW’s Energy Saving Scheme (ESS)

If you have a business in NSW, odds are you’ve had a salesman knock on your office, shop or warehouse some time in the past few years wanting to talk about getting cheap LED lighting (they were even offering “free” LED lighting a while back).

Typical scam, right?

Well, not exactly.

The door to door guys are often a bit misleading, with many unexpected costs if you go down that path, but ultimately you can get cheaper LED lighting via the Energy Savings Scheme (ESS).

What is the ESS?

The ESS lets you generate Energy Savings Certificates (ESC’s – usually called “eskies”) when you adopt energy saving measures which include installing LED lighting in place of existing fluorescent, halogen, and HID lighting. This is usually in warehouses and large office complexes.

Under the scheme, when a business upgrades their existing light fittings to energy efficient LEDs, this means they reduce their electricity consumption and this generates ESC’s.

This is where things get interesting.

Why does this matter?

You get to sell those ESC’s back to the energy retailers (i.e. Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy, Origin Energy).

That means, not only does your power bill go down by using more energy efficient lighting, you’re also generating more money by selling your ESC’s!!

What sort of savings can I expect?

One of our clients replaced 14 high bay light fittings with energy efficient LED lights.

Their annual power bills went from $4,150 to $1,400, saving $2,750 per year.

But don’t forget, the upgrade costs money too! The total cost of upgrading the high bay lights was $8,545. Normally, it would take around 3 years to recoup the cost of this upgrade with power savings alone.

BUT here’s where the magic happens – don’t forget about their ESC’s!

By making the change, they generated $4,690 worth of ESC’s immediately, which brought the total cost of the upgrade down to $3,855. Combine this with their annual energy saving of $2,750, and they’ve recouped most of the cost of the upgrade in the first year alone!

So can I just go upgrade my lighting right now?

It’s not quite as easy as that. In order to be eligible for the ESS, you need to either be Accredited, or work with a company that is.

Accreditation is super complex and a bit expensive, and it’s usually not worth it unless your energy consumption is through the roof. So instead, you work with someone that is already Accredited (we can help).

Once you have an Accredited Certificate Provider on board, they can help manage the process to upgrade your LED lighting.

So what do you do now?

Well, if you like the sound of saving a whole bunch of money on your power bill and getting money from the energy companies to do it, give Faraday Group a call!