When purchasing electrical appliances for your home, there are several factors to consider as a shopper. First and foremost is the upfront cost, of course. Once you’ve determined which options fit your budget, you might choose to rank machines that have desired features and functionality: a water dispenser on a fridge door, or a smart home integration so that you can get a notification on your phone when that dryer load is done.

But there’s something else that’s equally as important — and you get a nice reminder from the big energy efficiency label on the demo unit in the store! How much money will it cost you to use that appliance every year? And if it’s only designed to last 5-10 years, what is your real cost of ownership, accounting for repairs and so on?

These questions will come to mind when considering a Pio system — and they should! According to AutoStore’s 2023 State of the Market Report, 55% of survey respondents from across the order fulfillment and logistics industry are focusing on energy efficiency as a part of their sustainability efforts, and that these initiatives need to make real business sense in order to stick. When you’re considering Pio, we totally expect you to think that your utility costs will go up!

How can you save power by adding robots?

Of course, our robots need electricity to run around the top of the grid and unless you’ve already outfitted your warehouse with solar panels or wind turbines, it’s highly likely you need to pay for that power. For our friends in Europe, this has become more relevant than ever with the ballooning cost of electricity. Fortunately, each Pio robot is remarkably efficient, using the same power as a desktop computer.

But adding robots means that you’re adding to your facility’s overall power consumption, right? Well, maybe — but don’t forget that our robots don’t mind the cold and they have built-in night vision. In other words, they don’t require heating or lighting like a manual warehouse would!

Dapper, a long-time Pio user based in Oslo, has found that they can actually save electricity with our system:

“Energy costs are a challenge for us in these times. With Pio, we save electricity by only heating parts of the warehouse and switching off lighting over the grid”, Andreas Doppelmayr, founder and CEO of Dapper and Barbershop.no

And energy consumption is only one spoke in the wheel of sustainability. Pio’s parent company, AutoStore, has placed tremendous focus on accounting for carbon impact, anti-corruption, and promoting diversity and equality initiatives. You can learn more on their website, here.

Long story short, while Pio uses some juice, you might very well be able to make some tweaks to other aspects of your utilities usage in order to come out ahead of where you were without the robots — and we think that’s pretty cool.