Exploring Utility Incentives for Your Building

You may already be aware of standard rebates that you can get on equipment, but what about more unique incentives that don't fit under the prescriptive category? We recently sat down with one of our in-house energy experts, Emily Herchenroeder, Energy Solutions Team Leader at Boland, to give you an easy step-by-step guide to finding utility incentives for your building.

Incentive programs are designed to reduce demand on the utility grid, by incentivizing businesses to do capital improvement projects at a fraction of the cost. Clients will not only see savings through incentive rebate payouts, but additionally through significant cuts to their HVAC usage. Since a typical office building HVAC system accounts for 40-50% of the energy bill, most clients can expect to see payback in about 3-5 years following the project.

To demonstrate how utility incentive programs might apply to you and your situation, Emily shared three different examples of projects that have captured savings for our clients that may be applicable to you.

RETROFIT YOUR CHILLERS WITH ADAPTIVE FREQUENCY DRIVES:

While working with a client who owned a chiller plant in DC, we found a great rebate for them by retrofitting their existing chillers with AFDs, or Adaptive Frequency Drives. In doing this, they drastically reduced energy usage when the plant is operating at partial load, with payback in 5 years of less when more than one drive was installed. Emily noted that there is a big opportunity to retrofit equipment on existing plants, specifically AFDs.

LOOK INTO ENERGY VALVES:

A client in Berkeley County called upon Boland to retrofit their outdated system components with Belimo Energy Valves. By updating their antiquated system we were able to reduce their HVAC usage by more than half! Belimo Energy Valves can be used to manage chiller plant Delta T with algorithms that reduce over pumping and chiller/boiler operating costs. When using the valves, you can expect to see an increase in plant efficiency and mitigation of low Delta T syndrome. Not to mention, because of the integrated Energy Monitoring aspect, theses energy valves can act as a commissioning tool to view system performance. Additionally, this feature helps achieve LEED points - bonus! If your system is aging, updating your energy valves may help you to eliminate over-pumping and reduce energy usage.

MODERNIZE OUT YOUR INDOOR AIR QUALITY SYSTEM:

Boland developed a project with a client recently which offered a substantial rebate on Dynamic Air Filters. For this particular project, we estimated enough kilowatt-hours (kWh) savings to produce a rebate of more than $100k. As a building owner, this is really a win-win situation. Not only are you reducing energy usage and getting a rebate back to cover the offset of the project, but you are also drastically improving your Indoor Air Quality or IAQ.

HOW TO GET STARTED:

1. Reach out to an energy solutions provider, like Boland

2. Send along your utility bill with some trend data

   1. Don't have any energy data to send along? Don't worry! We'll help get you to a starting point if you are missing or lacking trend data

3. Schedule a survey visit with an energy solutions provider to assess your site

   1. At Boland, we can perform a survey visit at your site to evaluate the age and shape of your equipment and make a game plan off of that

   2. In order to gather data, we can install data loggers or possibly use a Energy Valve Test Kit

If you are looking to explore HVAC usage reduction and the rebates that come with that, please reach out to Boland's team at energy.engineering@boland.com and we'll help determine if the capital improvement project you are looking at is cost effective from an energy standpoint.

For more information on this topic, listen to Emily's podcast episode here! Be sure to like and subscribe to our podcast, 10 Minutes to a Better Building, available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Apple Podcasts.