Seven creative ways your business can cut energy costs

Tired of the same, worn-out advice on how to lower your electric bills? Solar is too expensive. You've already changed your light bulbs. How about some fresh ideas?

For most businesses with large electric bills, even those that have already taken steps toward greater efficiency, there are a number of creative, cost-effective ways to achieve even lower bills. The ideas below all have payback periods of two years or less and can be implemented without any changes to your operations or building envelope.

1. Fix fluorescents

Those new fluorescent lights you recently installed may not be as efficient as you think. Fluorescents cause harmonic distortion, a kind of electrical feedback or white noise which increases heat in the light fixture and reduces its efficiency. Harmonics can be corrected by harmonic filters or cancellers placed at lighting fixtures or panels to reduce harmonics in the lighting system and increase its efficiency. As an added benefit, reducing or eliminating harmonics in a lighting system will often cause other electrical equipment to consume less electricity and operate more efficiently.

2.Control current

Another way to reduce fluorescent lighting's electrical consumption is with a voltage regulator. A voltage regulator can reduce current to a light fixture by 15 percent to 30 percent, with a corresponding drop in electrical consumption. This may cause a small, often undetectable, drop in light levels. But for the kind of savings involved, you'll probably find this an easy sacrifice to make!

3. Get rid of HIDs

High-Intensity Discharge (HID) lighting is found in areas with high ceilings or no ceilings, like warehouses, production areas, and parking garages. While fluorescent lights historically could not match their output and thus were a poor substitute for HIDs, lighting advances have led to the development of high-intensity fluorescents (HIFs) which are now superior in most respects to their HID counterparts. HIFs have many advantages over HIDs: lower energy consumption, less loss of light output over product life ("lumen depreciation"), better dimming abilities, faster start-up and restart times, better color rendition, more light output in the spectrum visible to humans ("pupil lumens"), and reduced glare. Thus, in most applications, fluorescents are both more cost-effective than HIDs and able to provide light of better quality.

4. Control air conditioners

Air conditioning units cycle on and off throughout the day. With a small, external "smart controller," these units can be programmed to go through fewer cycles with no noticeable change in cooling output or comfort. Because a compressor consumes much more power while cycling on than while simply running, reducing its cycles can reduce power consumption by 10 percent or more.

5. Oil coils

Compressors in refrigeration and air conditioning units have a number of moving parts that generate friction. One of the cheapest and easiest ways to improve a cooling system's efficiency by 10 percent or more is to add special oil lubricants to the refrigerant. These oil lubricants reduce friction in the compressor's moving parts, improving mechanical efficiency and lowering power consumption. Oil additives may also provide other benefits, such as reducing wear on bearings and improving seal life.

6. Suppress surges

Voltage surges occur when several pieces of equipment (such as air conditioning units or machinery) cycle on at the same time and cause a demand spike. (External forces such as lightning or power grid modulation may also cause occasional surges.) A transient voltage surge suppressor (TVSS) placed at electrical equipment or panels can reduce demand spikes and lower electric bills. These devices also reduce stress and damage to electrical equipment, improving longevity and reducing maintenance costs.

7. Modify motors

Electrical motors (including drives, pumps and compressors) are found in many kinds of equipment, including elevators, fans, air handlers, boilers, machinery, air compressors, refrigerators, air conditioning units, spas and swimming pools. A motor's efficiency is measured by its "power factor," and sadly, most motors are inherently inefficient.

Imagine pushing a ball across a field which slopes to the side active power is the force that drives the ball across the field, and reactive power is the force that keeps the ball from rolling down the slope. Power factor measures the relationship between active power and reactive power. If the field in this analogy were level, requiring no reactive power, power factor would be 100. Motors typically run at a power factor of 80 or 90 out of 100, representing a potential efficiency loss of 10 percent to 20 percent. An idling motor, or one not under load, runs at an even lower power factor sometimes as low as 50. A motor running at a power factor less than 100 is inefficient in two ways first, the motor demands extra current to compensate for the power factor deficiency, which increases the electric bill, and second, the extra current causes the motor to run hotter, which reduces its lifespan. Correcting a motor to reduce its electrical consumption by 10 percent can increase the motor's life by 50 percent.

An easy way to help a motor run more efficiently is to increase its power factor by attaching a capacitor to the motor. A capacitor acts like a short-term battery, regularly storing and discharging current as necessary to provide power to the motor in a more efficient manner. Before-and-after readings on motors treated with a capacitor generally show an immediate reduction in consumption of 15 percent or more.

The Bottom Line

What can these efficiency measures achieve in financial and ecological benefits? By correcting electrical inefficiencies using the creative, fast-payback methods described above, an organization can lower its electric consumption by 15 percent or more. At a facility using 500,000 kilowatt hours monthly, a 15 percent reduction could lower annual electric bills by $100,000 or more and annual carbon emissions by more than 800,000 pounds.

David Simon is the chief executive officer of Evergreen Energy Solutions in Incline Village He can be reached at (775) 831-8677 or david.simon@evergreensolves.com.