How to get through the coming winter with minimal losses for shopping centers of Ukraine

The sharp cooling in the first days of September reminded once again about the forthcoming winter and the related problems of providing shopping centers with communal services. The war and the world political situation significantly affected the availability and price of energy carriers. Most of the frontline regions were completely left without gas, heating and electricity infrastructure. And in more peaceful Ukraine regions, we can also expect missile strikes on heat and power generating enterprises. In such difficult conditions, every commercial enterprise must model various options for obtaining energy resources and saving utility costs.

Those facilities that have several interchangeable or complementary sources of energy supply are in a more advantageous situation than those that rely on only one source. They have the ability to replace one source with another in the event of interruptions in the supply of certain utility services. Before the hot war phase a number of commercial real estate properties were experimenting with alternative energy sources such as solar energy, heat pumps, solid fuel boilers and other equipment. But as practice has shown such alternative sources cannot fully ensure the capacity of the facility and the stability of energy supply. Also, the long-term payback of the equipment and associated problems of its operation do not encourage the use of such alternative sources. Thus, everyone has to count mainly only on the stability of providing traditional communal services. Some shopping centers, whose heating systems were built to use gas as an energy carrier, are already converting the equipment for alternative electricity consumption.

In addition to the possible instability of the supply of communal services, a significant challenge is the unstoppable increase in their cost. For example, the global price of gas has been at a fever pitch for the last few months, and the price of electricity on the domestic market has increased more than one and a half times since the beginning of the war.

Accordingly, each shopping center is looking for ways to optimize its costs. Among the common methods of saving are light on/off sensors in bathrooms, water supply sensors in plumbing equipment, boilers with timers, escalators with motion sensors, switching on outdoor lighting using a light sensor or on a timer, and other automatic systems. But the possibility of automatically turning on each system according to a separate schedule or routine will not surprise anyone now. Facilities with more modern equipment and dispatching systems have the ability to individually configure energy-consuming equipment separately for each tenant’s room and for different sectors of common areas. This allows you to use individual schedules for turning on temperature regimes and power and air exchange sectors. Moreover, the presence of such equipment makes it possible to logically transfer part of the total costs of the object to the individual costs of the tenant. In this case, the tenant becomes personally interested in cost savings and joins regular cost savings planning, as well as more carefully monitors the actions of his staff on the leased space. In this way, the personal utility costs of the owner of the shopping center can be brought as close to zero as possible.

But such an opportunity to improve the financial situation is only in shopping centers with a small vacancy of tenants. In other cases, the main part of utility costs will be borne by the owner of the shopping center. Thus, in these difficult times, it is better for the owner of a shopping center to take a tenant with a minimum rent, but for him to compensate for utility costs, than to bear the financial burden of expenses.

Also, before the start of the cold season, it is necessary to check the tightness of the vestibules of the entrance groups and the regulations for the use of loading zones by tenants, the adequacy of the power of the thermal curtains, the adjustment of the width of the entrance doors and the distance of their operation. With the help of special equipment, it is necessary to check the thermal insulation of the building and the tightness of joints and seams.

Additional savings will be brought by reducing the facility’s operating hours, alternating use of escalators (to be used only for upward movement) and/or elevators, reducing lighting and ventilation power during periods of reduced visitor traffic, individual agreements with tenants to reduce the temperature in their premises.

An important tool for savings is the constant monitoring of the use of energy-consuming equipment by staff and tenants. A number of facilities even use special software that monitors current electricity consumption in each sector on-line, and in case of an overtime increase in the usage limit, the system issues a message to the operator on duty indicating the sector where the problem needs to be promptly identified and electricity consumption reduced.

Separately, it is necessary to take care of the availability of financial resources to minimize electricity costs. The liberalization of the electricity market made it possible to choose a more convenient energy supplier and an individual schedule of prepayments at minimum electricity prices. At the same time, only some shopping centers have included in their agreements requirements for tenants to make a similar advance for utility costs.

Thus, there are many tools and models for minimizing costs while maintaining a stable supply of utility resources. The maximum cost savings for the winter period will depend on the complexity and timeliness of the measures.