Sustainable Energy Services understands the challenges that companies face in today’s competitive environment. In response, SES has developed a practical, yet flexible, approach to achieve real and verifiable savings. SES can create an integrated energy assessment, planning, education and monitoring program tailored to meet any company’s specific needs.
The SES approach is unique, planned in discreet steps, and is completely objective and transparent. SES shares its knowledge, insight and experience as you engage us a step at a time, building on each previous step. This method focuses on goals that will reduce costs, reduce risk and improve operations. SES wants to help you develop a program that not only reduces your environmental impacts, but also increases profits and long-term brand value.
By combining SES’s engineering and business experience, we have developed a proven, practical methodology for developing an energy master plan. SES focuses on strategies that make good business sense
There are four steps to our process (which can be unbundled or customized as required)
1. Discovery
We start by understanding a company’s detailed energy consumption, which is accomplished by completing a thorough and professional energy audit. The American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) has developed standards for energy audits. There are three levels.
Level 1: This is a simple walk-through audit where an experienced energy expert makes a written note of various energy efficiency measures observed while surveying the building. There are no measurements taken and there are no financial estimates regarding investment payback , ROI or other metrics.
Level 2: This is closer to ‘investment grade’ and is what most companies choose since it provides detailed measurements and estimated financial payback and ROI information enabling them to act on recommendations.
Level 3: This is an investment-grade audit that includes everything in Level 2 plus additional services that help to tighten savings estimates, including software modeling of the building.
Each level of audit results in a written report detailing past energy consumption along with recommended energy conservation measures (ECM).
2. Deep Dive
After an energy audit is completed, a list of ECM’s is developed. Typically, at least half of the ECM’s are no cost/low cost opportunities that can be easily implemented by a company’s maintenance staff. The remaining ECM’s will typically require a higher level of investment and/or a more in-depth engineering analysis to better understand the economic benefits. This is where SES’s deep energy engineering experience can really help a company. SES has the instrumentation, analytics and expertise to tackle the most challenging kinds of projects with investment-grade results.
3. Implement
Sustainable Energy Services can assist with project implementation. We will prepare a project work scope and solicit multiple proposals from qualified resources to implement the project according to specific findings in the Deep Dive.
We will:
- Prepare the implementation strategy;
- Define the work scope for each project;
- Assist with identifying qualified contractors/resources;
- Manage the bid process;
- Assist with selecting a contractor;
- Oversee project to ensure energy efficiency objectives are being met.
4. Measure and Verify
After project completion, whether or not SES was involved with the project, we can assess and verify that the savings objectives have been achieved. This is accomplished through an objective measurement and verification procedure as outlined in the International Performance Measurement & Verification Protocol (IPMVP Protocol.) At this stage, SES can also develop and maintain an energy usage tracking dashboard that provides management with quantified energy usage and cost trends along with weather and/or production normalization as appropriate. This type of report is useful for seeing and understanding the positive financial impact various projects have on the company.
SES will:
- Measure and verify savings;
- Provide regular reporting on energy usage and financial impact from projects;
- Provide ongoing advisory services on energy, technology and best practices;
- Develop an energy policy for the client and provide training to staff and employees.