Utility Incentives

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.

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.
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.
Chiller & Cooling Best Practices interviewed Mr. Marcus Wilcox, President, Cascade Energy Engineering.