Monthly Archives: August 2018

Time to Plan for Your Energy Resiliency

It’s all over the news. Worldwide we have seen many news stories about extreme events: historic fires in California, 127℉ recorded in Death Valley, record heat and fires in Scandanavia, record heat and draughts from Japan to Europe. This impacts our lives. See the terrifying natural conditions in Africa where many farmers can no longer subsist, resulting in the worldwide immigration crisis we see. So these have great impacts on our lives and economics. And we’re not done yet. It’s only summertime and hurricane season is starting – the prime time when the risk of grid-disrupting events where you live and work is greatest. Why this is happening (climate change?) is not important. You are concerned with keeping your facilities operating and being energy resilient.

First, think about how important energy resiliency is for you. What if a major storm were to come through your city and damage the grid so that electricity is no longer delivered? What are the potential practical and financial impacts to your company?

  • You cannot make or deliver product. You cannot do what you do (and charge for it). Yet you still pay staff. Speaking of which: the very safety of your staff!
  • Uncertainty. You don’t know if your power will come back to resume normal services in one hour, a day, a week, or much, much longer (like in Puerto Rico).
  • Lost data. Your business is your data, and losing it because of a power loss can be existential. A number of firms went “under” directly due to Hurricane Sandy.
  • Efforts to get back in operation. Once a system is down – even if only for a few minutes – it may take a long time to get it operating normally again. And the cost. One study estimated that companies generally spend 20-30% of annual revenue to recover from even a brief power loss, in some cases requiring new equipment.

And a storm is not needed to knock out power. Many parts of the country are growing in population and electric demand, and utilities cannot keep up with the additional needed infrastructure to meet this growing demand. Several utilities have openly admitted they may be unable to reliably deliver electricity to people and businesses during peak need.

Energy resiliency means being less or non-dependent on the grid to deliver needed electricity – to develop your own reliable, secure source of electricity. What can your facility do to lower peak need and/or produce power independently? Being energy independent is not cheap, but could be worth it to avoid or lessen the risks above.
An energy resiliency strategy consists of:

  • Understanding your systems, equipment and peak electric needs;
  • Understanding the effects of a power outage and what redundancies exist to minimize its chances of happening;
  • Estimating when/how you are most vulnerable to a potential interruption;
  • Designing of absolute needs should there be a loss of power. Which systems must be maintained and which are less critical?

Options:

  • Sufficient emergency back-up power or combined heat & power (CHP);
  • Monitors to detect when grid power is interrupted – even in neighboring areas – so you are prepared and can automatically have backup systems supply power;
  • Batteries to store excess power in case of an interruption.

Proper strategies and implementation can greatly reduce the chance of your facility being impacted by a power interruption. Such long-term thinking is often a low priority. But in this summer of extremes, it is more important than ever to begin to plan and implement smart strategies to reduce the risk and impacts of electricity outages. Make sure you put money in your budget to begin such planning soon.

CCES can help your firm develop an energy resiliency strategy and plan to assess and lessen the risk of power interruptions and improve your bottom line. Contact us today at 914-584-6720 or karell@CCESworld.com.

1st Commercial Ferry Using Fuel Cells Will Launch in 2019

One of the most problematic segments of the economy when it comes to the environment is the shipping industry. Since most ships travel outside of countries’ boundaries, it is hard to enforce environmental rules. In addition, the culture of shipping is overwhelmingly avoiding rules and regulations and having the “freedom” to do what one wants. Countries, NGOs, and other organizations have tried to educate shipping companies about the values and benefits of climate change and environmental responsibility, but nobody wants to spend resources to address problems that their competitors are not addressing.

Thus, it was a bit of a surprise when Water-Go-Round announced the first commercial fuel-cell-operated ferry in the world beginning in 2019. The hydrogen fuel cell-powered ferry will be monitored by Sandia National Laboratories. The project received a $3 million grant from California Air Resources Board (CARB).

According to passengership.info, the aluminium catamaran will have a capacity of 84 passengers. The vessel has a top speed of 22 knots and will be powered by 360 kW-worth of Hydrogenics fuel cells, alongside lithium-ion battery packs. It will carry a 264 kg tank array of 250-bar compressed hydrogen, which should permit up to two full days of operation. Propulsion will come from two 300 kW shaft motors.

Following its launch, Water-Go-Round will undergo a three-month study period in San Francisco Bay, during which time Sandia National Laboratories will gather and assess performance data. CARB will use this data to assess the suitability of the technology for wider marine use. A hydrogen-battery hybrid system was chosen over a purely electric system because of its perceived greater flexibility, their lack of moving parts, near-silent operation, and scalability, as fuel cells can be combined into larger systems.

CCES has the experts to help your firm assess whether new technologies or applications can save you costs, boost productivity, and put your business in a more competitive position. Contact us today at 914-584-6720 or at karell@CCESworld.com.

Energy Efficiency Saves Money In Unexpected Ways

In real estate circles, energy efficiency often gets short shrift. Conventional thinking gives costs a 100/10/1 relationship. For every $100 a company spends on employees (salaries, health benefits, etc.), it “should” spend $10 on rent and operating expenses, and $1 on utilities (not just energy, but water, too). So, what would motivate a company to be more energy efficient and save only a fraction of the $1, when it can profit more by even a small gain in worker productivity; better return on the $100 spent on workers?

An owner recently published an article that estimated the costs of a building in their city as $300/sf for human resources, $30/sf for rent and O&M, and $3/sf for energy. They were initially pleased when upgrading lights and controls reduced energy costs by about 20%. However, that only saved about $0.60/sf out of $333, nothing to get excited about.

However, it turned out that the new lights were much longer lasting than the old ones, reducing operating costs (time/effort to regularly replace burned out lights) by 10%, savings of $3/sf. The new lights were designed to be of the right color temperature and location to coordinate with specific needs and reduced glare, reducing employee absenteeism and improving productivity. How much can well-designed lights save? It is hard to be accurate. But if new lights reduces absenteeism by only 1%, that’s 20 more hours work annually per employee. What if the lights also improve productivity by 1%? That’s equivalent of each worker being productive 20 more hours per year without having to pay more salary. Fewer coffee and other breaks can easily save this amount. A 1% reduction in absenteeism and 1% gain in productivity is a savings of $6/sf. There’s a good chance that savings would be more than 1% per person. The lighting upgrade, perceived to save the firm only $0.60/sf, has really saved it at least 16 times more.

Therefore, don’t look at an energy upgrade as only saving money on utility bills. Look at it as saving operating costs and making employees healthier and more productive. Leverage the value of energy upgrades to get CFOs and CEOs interested in energy!

CCES has the technical experts to help you get the greatest benefits from an energy upgrade, including O&M savings and productivity improvements, not to mention save much on your energy bills and get incentives to have others pay for them! See how we can make $ for you. Contact us today at 914-584-6720 or at karell@CCESworld.com.

Paving Roads With – Eh, Solar Panels?

French and Chinese companies are experimenting with new technologies that would revolutionize the solar industry, producing solar panels that can be placed on our roads to make electricity. The appeal of “solar roads”, solar panels installed in place of asphalt, is clear. Generating electricity from already developed areas, like highways and streets, rather than from fields could conserve a lot of land.

By producing electricity on roads in and around cities, the electricity can be transmitted relatively shorter distances with less lost in transmission, as opposed to electricity from solar panels in rural fields. And procuring the land is essentially free because roads are needed anyway. Durable solar panels could reduce the cost of road maintenance, too.

Generating electricity on roads themselves could have other advantages, such as melting snow that falls on them or embedding them with lights for better illumination. There has been experimentation of using solar roads to re-charge electric vehicles.

The surface of experimental solar panels is composed of a complex polymer that has slightly more friction than a conventional road surface. Developers are trying to modify manufacturing procedures to ensure a tire’s grip on it is equivalent to asphalt.

A number of challenges exist for this technology before it is widely used. For example, a solar road is currently about 3 to 4 times the cost of a conventional asphalt road, although solar roads produce a sellable commodity, electricity. Based on current costs of electricity, the payback for the increased cost of a solar road is about 15 years. This payback can decrease if the solar panels can be made more efficient in producing electricity, as they lie flat and are occasionally blocked by vehicles.

One critical question left unanswered is how well solar panels can take the pounding of huge numbers of tires daily for many years. Most U.S. roads are made primarily with asphalt, which can buckle or shift under the weight of many cars, potentially damaging the solar chips that produce the electricity. European and Chinese roads have more concrete to absorb the flow, compared to U.S. roads. In addition, solar panels on roads might be stolen, leaving large potholes in the road and reducing productivity.

CCES can use our technical and economic experience to help your company or building assess a wide array of renewable energy options and which make the most sense for your specific building and circumstance. Contact us today at 914-584-6720 or at karell@CCESworld.com.