With these costs making up a huge portion of overheads for UK retailers it would seem the logical solution would be to reduce them, giving retailers an inch of flexibility to improve profit margins. For businesses that have been under pressure to perform due to the changing nature of consumer buying habits and increased competition, it is vital that UK retailers continue to innovate – through the smart supermarket.
Shine a Light
Supermarkets need light to convey the message of having a clean, food-friendly environment. This is traditionally done by shining light onto eye-catching marketing materials.
When natural light is unavailable, they use fluorescent strip lighting to bathe the store in a bright artificial glow. However, with seasons getting lighter, there is now a plethora of natural light available, making the consistent use of manufactured lights counterproductive and unnecessarily costly. Implementing an IoT energy and asset monitoring solution could give retailers greater visibility of the light levels in their stores, alongside identifying cost saving windows.
The Eyes of Hark
As Isaac Asimov once wrote, “you can’t differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans”. The very best of human capabilities wouldn’t be able to comprehend the mammoth task these artificial intelligent programmes are completing.
Our energy monitoring solution will give retailers greater control over their energy consumption. When utilising IoT sensors on external-facing walls we can accurately monitor external lights levels and feed this information back to the Hark Platform. Our platform uses AI and machine learning algorithms to analyse the data and automatically control internal light levels based on the information. To provide a greater level of accuracy we feed data from weather API’s into our cloud-based platform to give greater insight into expected light levels.
When there is sufficient external light, internal light levels can be altered to become dimmer or brighter on a scale so that a consistent light level is maintained in the store. Our solution is infinitely scalable; retailers can control lighting across all their nationwide stores, simultaneously, at the click of a button.
We have already implemented autonomous lighting control into our retail client’s stores and data from lights is being fed into The Hark Platform every 60 seconds with over 2 million readings per day. This monitoring has provided significant insight into their energy-usage patterns which saved the retailer £1m in 2019 and so far in 2020, have saved enough energy to power 35 homes for a year, or 24 million mobile phones.
To find out more about how we can provide unprecedented visibility and control over your energy consumption, get in touch with one of our specialists.
