Once again we're going "Green" for the greenbacks. This time it's for the heat.
 

As I've said before, we changed our fluorescent fixtures in our building to energy efficient fluorescent fixtures in mid-2007. We saved $4500 so far this year over our 2006 bills and that's with 2 price increases. We paid off the cost of replacement and installation by a contractor in a year and a half. It's all gravy now.

Today we've started the conversion from an oil burner to gas. Our current boiler is a Smith 28A-10 which was installed in Nov. 2000. It was efficient at the time, I think 65% but the process of heating it to steam to heat the warehouse and then converting it back to hot water for the front offices has to bring that efficiency down to the 50% range. We've currently got 7 zones so if any one of those zones calls for heat, the boiler has to fire up even if it's only for that one zone. Last year our heating oil bills averaged $8000/month Dec.-Mar. and and a bit less than that on either side of the "heating season".

The fact that our underground tank is approaching the 20 year mark isn't insignificant.

We've got a Buderus GB142-60 (95% AFUE) wall mount furnace going in for our offices and bathrooms to take advantage of the radiators. The thing is half the size of my 30yo home gas furnace! :eek: And in the warehouse we've got 14 Heil 4-position furnaces that are 92.1% efficient replacing the current steam radiator/blower units. The best part is that every unit has its own thermostat and timer which will drastically cut down on the "active" time, ie the current boiler starting up->heating the water->producing steam for the one area that the women are occupying in the packing area.

I'm pretty excited to see the end results and it wouldn't surprise me if the payback is less than 5 years on the entire project. :)

Next up is looking at some sort of sprayed on insulation for the (flat) roof and finding more info on those solar tubes for lighting during the day.

Wow...I'm quite surprised with the level of savings on that electric bill...

Yup, payback is how you really get people to invest in "green" upgrades. The current problem is that energy prices are too volatile (and too low) to drive these types of investments on a large scale. So the question is; how do we get energy prices up to a reasonable value and keep them fairly stable?

Start buying oversized SUV's while running your home AC with the windows open in the summer.:D

That's the point, the supply/ demand curve for energy is broken. Energy prices have more to with the value of the dollar and the whims of the suppliers than the actual demand. It's difficult to justify investments if you can't predict the payback.

Well i'm perfectly happy with current energy prices and would be more then happy enough to see that price go down (WHY IS DIESEL STILL MORE EXPENSIVE THE GASOLINE:mad::mad::mad:)

But the basic answer would be to reduce the supply so the price will naturally climb.

Sometimes it's not really "green", but just energy conscious :)

I'm not sure if I 100% agree with switching to CCFLs (simply because of toxicity), but, hopefully, even better lighting technology will be around the corner, LEDs and such.

These really do pay for themselves.

I don't know how that would be done unless we want to fix energy prices at a specific level. An import duty could do that if it was adjustable, but I hate to see a "tax" solution.

PG&E offered my uncle a free lighting upgrade for the shops at the orchard. It took him about 6 months to get them out there to install the lights, but last week they came and installed them, Free! they replaced the existing sodium lights with flourecent. Its a great improvment since the old lights have been there since the 80s, and they took forever to warm up. We'll see how it efects the power bill, but its suppose to be a pretty good savings.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2679/...facdc3392c.jpg

I was shocked with the lights. After all, we already had fluorescent lights to begin with and they're generally thought of as efficient. However many of the fixtures were 15-20 years old. That energy savings is strictly from the switch to high efficiency guts and ballasts, many of the fixtures themselves are still in use (some 8 footers were replaced by two 4 footers). The kWH comparison is impressive, although dollars speak more clearly and are easier to remember.

Trust me C_N, if there's a more efficient option that's cost effective we'll be exploring it!

We're waiting on a electric motor audit for replacing the motors on our packaging and mixing equipment.

I think he is going to be pleasantly surprised!

What types of motors do you use now?

Energy costs are a big expense for any business.

The grocery store I used to work at spent $100k-$120k a year on electricity.:eek: The owner was always looking for things to cut that bill down.


I have to say the largest power bill I have ever heard of was from a RE investment group I was talking to. They owned a large mall that was all electric heat!:eek: I don't know who thought that was a good idea. The bill was $1m a month. They sold the property to some other sucker, it really needs to be converted to gas.

My residential oil-to-gas boiler conversion would have had a 6-7 year payback, and that's with oil going up past $4. I'm still staying with oil for now.

In your case it makes prefectly good sense due to the space you're managing. What's heating the tap water?

Currently the only gas unit in the building, a gas HWH. Which is in the boiler room on the opposite end of the building. Now that we'll had the gas lines running throughout I'd like to go with an on-demand one right near the bathrooms. Really no sense in heating the water 24 hrs. a day for an 8 hr. work day. Especially when peak usage is that 10 minute span at breaks, before they go to lunch and before they leave for the day. Definitely less hot water with everyone washing their hands than probably one decent length shower at home.

Our two grass seed mixers run 3-phase 5hp motors and our two packaging machines run 2.5hp motors, that are all decades old. One is easily 30. During their respective busy seasons the mixers run about 4 hrs./day and the packaging machines about 7.5 hrs./day, both with less frequent use the rest of the year.

Tax them. Over relianance on foreign energy has become a national security issue for the US, not just an economic issue.

Yes I can imagine how much power those would drain. It was fun back when we still had the old rotary dial electric meters. I used to sit and watch how much faster it would turn every time my father would fired up the table saw :)

That is the question, isn't it? How long will it take to pay for itself? You need to calculate also the interest for the investment as though you took out a bank loan. After all, that money would earn interest in your bank at the very least. Say you peg it at current rates, where is the difficulty? If you do that, you can say "At current rates, the item and what not will pay for itself in X years.".

Say I spend $10000 to change my windows. What would it cost me as a home improvement loan by the time it is said and done? Well, how much, AT CURRENT RATES will this set of windows save me? Say $2000 a year in heating. At the very least, it will cost me 5 years of interest. Calculate from there.

Yup, the problem is that you can't do the calculation if energy costs aren't predictable. As it is, these cost can vary by about 50 percent in one year. The problem is multiplied if you are looking at a large investment for "alternate" power (i.e., spending 10s of millions to develop a wind farm).

A little update
 

First, it should be dated 5/10/11. :o

'09-'10 was when the conversion took place so there was some oil use as well as natural gas. We used up all of the fuel in the tank while they tested the gas units so that we always had a heat source.

Obviously, it's tough to nail down a moving target. But bottom line, we'll spend about $12K on gas by the time we shut the furnaces down for the season which is a saving of $28K+ over the last full year of oil heat in '08-'09 and a savings of $33K+ over the '07-'09 average. We're on pace for a 2.3 year ROI for the complete project cost which included the old oil tank removal. Before we started we were hoping <5 years. And there is some room for efficiency improvement with window and overhead door replacement.

If you're a business owner, don't overlook your energy and heating expenses when looking to bolster your bottom line. That savings almost covered the cost of an employee (well, without benefits).

http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z...gExpenses2.jpg

Solar tubes can work exeptionally well in certain applications. My father in law just installed some in his house and in a couple of instances no longer needs to turn on a lights in rooms. Of course he's in Tucson. Your mileage may vary depending on locatoin and weather.

- Peter.

If you want the electricity supply to decrease - the EPA is on that like white on rice =)

I think its call 'clean air transport' rules are about to shut down a number of older coal-fired powerplants (or, at least make them economically unfeasable to run) in the next few years.

Nobody's house is gonna go dark because of this, but it will take away some of our excess generating capacity.

I'm still thinking they may be a viable option for us since we're only open during daylight hours. The lights would theoretically only be needed on rainy/snowy/cloudy days and around 4:00 during the winter. We do have some skylights but because of the greenhouse effect in the summer we end up covering them. The tubes do minimize that.

We haven't completely given up on solar electricity yet. Due to our proximity to Hartford, we don't qualify for many of the programs available (they're based on population density and we're considered Greater Hartford even though our pop. is <26,000). We did have a consultant come out last week to take some measurements and he is going to come up with a plan for us.