Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs
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Office of Technical Assistance and Technology |
| 100 Cambridge Street, Suite 900
Boston, MA 02114 Phone: 617.626.1060 Fax: 617.626.1095 |
Fundamentals of Energy Conservation - April 2008
OTA hosted workshops in April 2008 on energy efficiency. Below are the presentaions from the workshops:
Energy Efficiency for Industrial Facilities
Establishing an Energy Efficiency Strategy
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have developed several resources and tools to assist companies in this effort:
Identifying and Evaluating Energy Efficiency Opportunities
Quick Plant Energy Profiler (QuickPEP)
QuickPEP is a DOE tool useful for conducting an initial screen of potential energy saving opportunities. It is run online at DOE’s website.
Energy Use and Loss Footprints
This tool was developed by DOE to map the flow of energy supply, demand, and losses in manufacturing facilities, and is available for a number of manufacturing industries.
Facility Energy Audits
DOE offers assistance in conducting audits through its Save Energy Now program and through the Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) located at UMass Amherst. Energy consultants also conduct audits and can provide a variety of reference materials.
Other DOE Resources
Software tools - DOE offers a number of software tools for evaluating energy saving opportunities for industrial systems and components such as steam systems, process heaters, pump systems, motors, fan systems, and compressed air systems. The Massachusetts Energy Efficiency Partnership (MAEEP) conducts trainings on these tools.
Publications
DOE offers 4 types of publications for the industrial systems described above: Tip Sheets, Technical Fact Sheets and Handbooks, Sourcebooks, and Market Assessments.
Case studies – for facilities receiving plant-wide assessments from DOE.
Utility Energy Efficiency Incentive Programs
Many electric and gas utilities provide funding to assist their customers in implementing energy efficiency projects, including conducting energy audits. Contact your account representative for detailed information on your provider’s programs. If your energy supplier is a municipal utility, there may only be limited incentive programs available, so check with your provider. Links to many municipal utilities are provided at the MA Division of Energy Resources (DOER) website.
Energy Efficiency Management
Combined Heat and Power (CHP)
CHP is an efficient and reliable approach to generating power and thermal energy from a single fuel source that offers energy and environmental benefits over electric-only and thermal-only systems in both central and distributed power generation applications. CHP systems consist of a number of individual components – prime mover (such as a reciprocating engine or steam turbine), electric generator, heat recovery, and electrical interconnection – that are configured into an integrated whole. CHP systems achieve typical effective electric efficiencies of 50% to 70% - a significant improvement over the average efficiency of separate heat and power systems. The following websites offer a wide variety of tools, resources, and information on topics such as CHP technologies, determining whether a facility is a good candidate for CHP, evaluating CHP system feasibility, estimating emissions from CHP systems, evaluating CHP system economics, financing CHP systems, CHP case studies, and technical assistance -
Load Management and Demand Response
Demand Response is reducing or shifting facility electricity use in response to either high wholesale electricity prices or reliability problems on the electricity grid. It has the added benefit of assisting in managing load shape at a facility, which can help in negotiating a lower price with a competitive electricity supplier. While energy efficiency is reducing electricity use for many hours per day for most of the year, Demand Response is reducing or shifting electricity usage for only a handful of hours per day a few days per year. ISO New England, the operator of the electric grid in New England, offers a Demand Response program through which they compensate large electricity users for reducing consumption during periods when market prices are high, or demand is high and system reliability is at risk, thereby generating cost savings. ISO is phasing out the Demand Response program over the next several years, and integrating the concept of demand response into their new Forward Capacity Market as “demand resources”. The investor owned utilities in Massachusetts administer the ISO program, and also offer services to help their customers monitor and manage their electric usage. If you buy electricity from a municipal provider, contact them to determine the load management and Demand Response services they provide.
Energy Service Companies (ESCOs)
An ESCO, or Energy Service Company, is a business that develops, installs, and finances projects designed to improve the energy efficiency and maintenance costs for facilities over a seven to 10 year time period. ESCOs generally act as project developers for a wide range of tasks and assume the technical and performance risk associated with the project.
Buildings
Energy Saving Tips for Industrial and Commercial Buildings
Energy Star
Energy Performance Indicators (EPIs) to rate the current energy performance of your facility against similar facilities
● Energy Star Building Manual
● Energy Star Cash Flow Opportunity Calculator
● Energy Star Programs for Industry - Bill White, U.S. E.P.A. – Region 1
Other Resources
● High Efficiency Commercial Unitary HVAC Initiative - Cool Choice.net
● Information – DesignLights
● High Efficiency Commercial Lighting Initiative
● High-Performance Buildings for High-Tech Industries Program at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab – provides current research, best practices, and information on data center energy efficiency
● BPA Industrial Audit Guidebook (For Electrical Energy Consumption)
● DOE Greening Federal Facilities: An Energy, Environmental, and Economic Resource Guide for Federal Facility Managers and Designers
● Procedure For Measuring And Reporting Commercial Building Energy Performance
● EnergyStar Building Upgrade Manual
● LEED – the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings
● EPA Green Building
● Green Design Information
● New Buildings Institute Efficient Windows Collaborative
● Lighting Research Center
● Northeast Sustainable Energy Association
Renewable Energy
Benefits of using renewable energy include: cutting energy costs, reducing dependence on fossil fuels, minimizing greenhouse gas emissions, staying competitive, and being a responsible neighbor. The Office of Technical Assistance and Technology (OTA) is committed to helping businesses achieve these goals and has developed a fact sheet that addresses some of the most common questions regarding renewable energy in Massachusetts.
Energy Conservation
