Utility Incentives

The Impact of Water Utility Rates on Chiller Selection

By Judith M. Peters, PE LEED-AP BEMP, Daikin Applied Americas

Do water-cooled chiller plants still deliver lower utility bills? Today, many chiller plant energy analyses carefully account for energy costs, and even energy escalation rates – a factor that projects how fuel costs will increase over time, while ignoring water and wastewater costs associated with cooling towers. While highly effective at transferring heat, cooling towers consume millions of gallons of water each year through the process of evaporation, drift, and blowdown. With the rising cost of water and wastewater, this omission can result in an incomplete picture for the building owner.

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Deschutes Brewery and Holladay Park Plaza Save with the Energy Trust of Oregon

By Rod Smith, Chiller & Cooling Best Practices Magazine

Since 2002, Energy Trust of Oregon have saved and generated 728 average megawatts of electricity and 52 million annual therms of natural gas. This is enough energy to power Multnomah and Washington counties while heating Deschutes County homes. ETO has saved enough energy equal to the output of a power plant and reduced reliance on fossil fuels. In total, they have invested $1.5 billion to save customers more than $6.9 billion on their energy bills over time.
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ComEd® Incentivizes Chiller & Process Cooling Efficiency

By Chiller & Cooling Best Practices Magazine

The ComEd® Energy Efficiency Program offers incentives to help facilities save money by improving the efficiency of their equipment. Industries can receive standard cash incentives for common energy efficiency improvements or custom cash incentives for making improvements not included in the standard program.
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Chiller Plant Optimization Yields $386,000 Utility Rebate

By Mike Flaherty, General Manager, tekWorx

A manufacturing site’s central utility plant (CUP) provides 24/7 cooling for critical R&D laboratories, critical manufacturing processes, data centers and office space. Over a period of several years, campus growth had significantly increased facility energy consumption, raising costs dramatically. Simultaneously, the host state enacted a legislation to deregulate utilities, a move potentially doubling the cost of electricity.
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Acquiring Energy Incentives for Industrial Chiller Systems

By Chiller & Cooling Best Practices Magazine

Utility companies don’t want to build more power plants — period. But as cities grow, more pressure is placed on the energy infrastructure, forcing utility companies to look for ways to reduce energy consumption. One of the methods utility companies use to reduce energy demands is to incentivize building owners to install higher efficiency machinery. By charging ratepayers a little bit of money every month, the utility company creates a fund that can provide substantial rebates to those that apply.
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Establishing the Energy Incentive Benchmark - The Ameren Illinois ActOnEnergy® Program

By Rod Smith, Chiller & Cooling Best Practices

Chiller & Cooling Best Practices interviewed Keith Martin (Director Energy Efficiency) and Cheryl Miller (Energy Efficiency Advisor) from Ameren Illinois and Robert Baumgartner (Business Program Manager) from Leidos Engineering. Seven years ago, a team of three of us at Ameren Illinois made the commitment to create and deliver a program that would make a difference. Today, the Ameren Illinois ActOnEnergy program is an award-winning energy efficiency program covering southern and central Illinois. After six program years, we are thrilled to report our business customers are saving over $132 million in annual energy costs due to energy efficiency measures they implemented with financial incentive assistance from ActOnEnergy.
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EPA ENERGY STAR Releases Energy Treasure Hunt Guide Book

The US Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR program is providing a new energy management resource, Energy Treasure Hunts: Simple Steps to Finding Energy Savings. This new guide book draws upon the best practices of ENERGY STAR partner organizations that use energy treasure hunts to engage employees in finding low cost energy saving opportunities from behavioral, operational, and maintenance oriented actions.
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PG&E’s Third-Party Energy Incentive Programs

Chiller & Cooling Best Practices® interviewed Mr. Justin Kjeldsen, Mr. Jeff Kohn, and Mr. Sam Zimmerman, Senior Program Managers for Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E).

PG&E runs energy incentive programs through two channels. We have our core channel representing the majority of our energy incentive offerings, and we offer energy incentives through third-party channels. Our Third-Party programs account for approximately twenty percent (20%) of the energy incentive dollars. PG&E has contracted with thirty-four (34) third-party companies, or implementers, to run fifty (50) contracts.
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Energy Trust of Oregon's Production Efficiency Incentive Program

Cooling and Chiller Best Practices® interviewed Mr. Ray Hawksley (Industrial Technical Manager) of the Energy Trust of Oregon Inc.

Energy Trust of Oregon is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to helping utility customers benefit from saving energy and tapping renewable resources. Our services, cash incentives and energy solutions have helped participating customers of Portland General Electric, Pacific Power, NW Natural and Cascade Natural Gas save nearly $600 million on energy bills.
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Energy Incentives from Great River Energy

Chiller & Cooling Best Practices® interviewed Mr. Jake Selseth (Energy Incentive Program Administrator) of Great River Energy (GRE).

GRE administers a $9.5 million dollar energy rebate incentive budget in 2010 for our 28 co-ops. Fifty percent of the budget is designated for Residential and fifty percent targets Commercial, Industrial, Agricultural. This is the same budget we had in 2009 and in 2008, our budget was $6.5 million.
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