I was going to write about the proposed Eskom Structural Tariff
Adjustments which have been recently proposed but, hey, why subject
readers to so much raw action and excitement at one time, and so I
thought rather to write about saving money on your power
account.
To begin at the beginning. It so happened that one of the first
energy performance contractors was James Watt (or so I heard). He
offered, way back when, to pump water using his new condensing
steam engine with pump attached. At the time, water pumping was
done with a non-condensing engine which was not as efficient as
Watt's. So Jamie boy made an agreement whereby he would be paid in
bags of coal, where each bag would be pro rata the bags that he
saved from use by using his more efficient engine. Moving to today,
we have a number of organisations who trade as energy performance
contractors. What they do is to look at your energy use (and the
account that has to be paid for such use) and then, providing such
is possible, they will offer to install equipment that will reduce
the account. Their payment will be proportional to the
reduction.
This is a good idea. But a warning! There are very good energy
performance contractors out there and some complete con artists.
How do you tell the difference? Firstly, look at the CV of the
members of the energy performance company. If the organisation has
at least one qualified engineer (as in certificated, B.Eng or
Bsc(eng) or Pr. Eng) then ask to speak to that person. A brief
interview will give you an idea of whether you are dealing with
gold or dust. An even better idea is to ask a firm of consulting
engineers to recommend somebody.
Having entered into negotiations, the next step is to ask the
contractor to do a complete energy audit. This should result in a
report which will define the energy use of your company on a per
square metre basis, related to production or use of that space.
Such an audit will quickly identify if, in fact, any energy savings
are possible or not. For example if you find (from the audit) that
your office block has an energy consumption of two watts per square
metre then no savings are possible (although you might like to
issue your staff with flashlights so that they can see while
operating their slide rules on gloomy days ). If the energy
consumption is say, 120 watts per square metre then you can really
save some money. The audit from the contractor should identify
savings possibilities but, most importantly, should be commissioned
on a 'stand-alone' basis. There should be no commitments based on
the report. If you as the client choose at that moment to take the
report and go see another energy contractor around the corner, then
that should be ok. There should be no "having read our report you
may not use the contents to save energy other than by employing
us". If the report identifies saving possibilities then the
contractor should be asked to make a detailed proposal as to how
the saving can be achieved. The proposals will normally be of the
nature that the contractor will, at its own expense, install some
equipment which reduces the energy account and will be paid from
savings over a number of years. If the proposal is not adopted,
there should be some agreement that the contractor is compensated
for the costs of compilation of the proposal.
All being well, the contract is agreed and thereafter savings on
the accounts should appear. You as the client can easily check this
– just take accounts from previous years, add about 8%
increase per year and see if there is a saving evident. There
should be. If not you have a right to query why not and, in extreme
cases, get a consulting engineer to investigate. But, if you have
chosen your energy performance contractor carefully then this
should not be necessary. As I said, there are some brilliant
contractors out there and some sharks. Some shark-detection methods
: If the contractor mentions "power factor correction" as a means
of saving, check if your power account has a maximum demand
component (kVA). If the letters "kVA" don't appear anywhere on your
account summary, then power factor correction won't work for
you.
If the contractor says that a "special meter" is needed which costs
a lot of cash, find out exactly what is meant by this – if
the device is a load prediction or load shedding device then this
is legitimate – if it's a superior form of energy meter then
the municipality normally provides this. If the contractor says
that you can save money by "a simple tariff change" be sure what is
implied – to change existing tariffs often requires quite a
large payment for the change and sometimes a levy to offset
diminished cash flows to the utility supplying the power. But, in
contrast, I might point out that I often deal with organisations
who have many properties and who, using a good energy contractor,
could save millions of rands. I tell them this and they often say
"Oh, we know about that" but they do nothing. Why, I don't know. |
|
