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Treatment Methodology

Treatment Methodology

What we do

  • Develop turn key projects for our clients by installing energy conservation equipment that minimizes out of pocket cost, and maximizes return from cash flow. Clients usually see anywhere from 30% to 50% R.O.I.
  • Works directly with company executives, officers, owners, or directors to serve as a one-time management tool for creating unplanned cash flow improvements.
  • Thoroughly interviews client management to determine expectations and needs, then works only within the client-determined framework.
  • Provide client with specific project targets for cash flow improvement, prior to any work being solicited or any fees being accepted; all client decisions are guided by these specific, fully guaranteed project targets.
  • Present client with a risk free option for gaining immediate positive cash flow improvements through retaining budgeted energy payments.
  • Accept complete financial responsibility for all of our work, and has the financial strength to honor these commitments.
  • Protect client from often inaccurate and costly advice from internal staff, third party engineers, and local utilities, who are willing to undertake electrical efficiency projects, yet lack the depth of experience and skills needed to do so competently.
  • Provide complete after-the-project follow up analysis and reportage to aid clients in evaluating the project’s performance and return on investment.
  • Develop and implement only long term, high durability projects, typically providing full financial benefits for over 20 years after implementation.

Metering and Assessments

The first step towards implementing energy saving measures is to make a small commitment. It is our experience that success rates improve when this commitment is made at the outset.The commitment involves our technician walking through the facility and assessing what technologies they think are applicable. We then apply heuristics to suggest the level of savings we could bring. If that level were acceptable, we would ask for a detailed metering and inventory based assessment of the facility. The cost of this phase is typically 15% of an average monthly electric bill.

The result of this phase includes:

  • A detailed power consumption and power quality report (raw and graphical data ) at all major MDBs representing major energy saving opportunities. Consumption at higher order harmonics to be included in the report.
  • A design for VAR compensation / harmonic suppression systems along with projected savings and baseline metering for confirmation of those savings.
  • A list of potential energy saving projects along with estimated paybacks for future initiatives. These will include but are not limited to treatments on the Cogen plant, HVAC plant, lighting circuits and other assorted transformers and motors at the plant.
  • A list of electric demand reducing opportunities – to mitigate future demand charges from your utility.

Should the results be satisfactory the cost of the assessment could be credited towards a project that addresses the opportunities found in this phase.

Conservation Technologies

The approach that we take to gain electricity efficiency in existing facilities is to install power treatment technologies to the individual loads in a facility and, where needed, to install passive or active power quality correction at either individual loads, individual branch circuits, or the master service entrance. The electricity savings from power treatment technologies originate from these concepts:
LIGHTING CORRECTION
Today, the trend of achieving greater lighting efficiencies have come in the form of fluorescent and HID lighting. Though this lighting is more efficient than incandescent lighting, it is also true that neither fluorescent nor HID’s are maximally efficient when connected to standard, sinusoidal waveform AC power. We have developed an entire line of special purpose waveform modification based lighting controllers that significantly reduce total energy consumed by these lighting fixtures, yet can achieve significant operating cost savings without reducing visible spectrum light output. Secondly, all of our lighting controller technologies have been designed to suppress or trap broadband harmonic content from the load side of the device, therefore adding to the systems cascade effect of both improved overall efficiency and improved overall facility power quality.
LINE LOSS AND VOLTAGE DROP
Real line losses and voltage drops in commercial and industrial facilities far exceed the amounts, and effects, determined by classroom theories. Unlike these traditional calculation methods, which only consider isolated loads and circuits, real voltage drops in real facilities have wide ranging effects on the voltage and current values in the entire facility.
WIRING AND DISTRIBUTION CAPACITY
The practice of wiring a facility to meet National Electrical Code (NEC) and then being confident that the system must operate at acceptable efficiency is expensively misguided. The NEC, written by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), designs electrical systems to be safe from causing fires. Not a single element of the NEC has been developed as a standard against which efficiency can be judged or calculated. Consequently, due to the failure of designing a system to be lightly loaded and cool operating, virtually every manufacturing plant we have encountered has been in serious need of remedial efforts to correct high current and distortion values. These values contribute to high electrical costs and higher cost from equipment replacement, repair, and down time.
POWER FACTOR CORRECTION
We have found that the careful application of properly sized (by VAR) capacitive devices in very close proximity to inductive loads clearly meets the ‘two benefit’ standard of generating direct and indirect savings. While such an approach requires specifically creating an exactly matched capacitor network for every single treated load in a facility, it more than pays for the effort in quick payback through consumption savings, savings from reduced down time and maintenance, and savings from improved power quality.
HARMONIC CORRECTION
We have found that certain types of plant equipment e.g. large VFDs, electronic lighting ballasts, welding machines create electrical noise that is damaging to electrical and electronic equipment in the facility. These harmonic currents are also not usable by any connected equipment and waste energy as heat and flux. In extreme situations they can cause premature failure of electro-mechanical equipment on the same distribution circuit. Our approach of active and passive filtering of higher order harmonic currents saves energy, runs the plant cooler and extends the life of plant equipment.