Intro to Renewables

Institutions, companies, and various entities WANT to be green. At a trade organization dinner, a conference, or the occasional cocktail party you will here oil prices quoted within a dollar, another conversation will center on a wind farm project, a third might be an in depth discussion of national energy policy. If you can slip into the conversation you might ask one of the more knowledgeable speakers how many KW they purchased from the local utility for use in their own residence last month. What could be more proactive than being aware and taking control of your own little isolated box.
You want to go green with a wind generator? The designer will ask for your last five year usage history and design a 1 megawatt wind turbine at $1 per watt to match the historic load. It takes about 2 years to design, approve, and finance your wind turbine. Imagine spending $40,000 on a comprehensive maintenance and optimization program for two years prior to the design. Such programs can reduce consumption by 10 or 15% or aggressively applied, 30% or more. But there is no funding for operations & maintenance. I need capital benefits. So in the end the county executive presents you with a plaque for the largest greenest wind turbine connected to the most inefficient building in the county. Has it happened...... I am not aware of it.
Cogen sets? Pretty much the same.
A lot is the funding. Talk going green and sustainable and the conversation leads to funding sources. "Who will buy me equipment to help me save money?"  Have we become a planet of green purchasers? "Buy one of those and save money." Use the deferred maintenance cost from the old equipment to enhance the ROI even though the new efficient model may be more maintenance intensive. A funding source had to buy it. Where will the maintenance money come from?

Remember the old story about people not recognizing opportunity when it knocks because it wears work clothes?
Well, the green sustainable renewable energy man was singing on my doorstep:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y67hStSFMso&feature=related


No work clothes on this one!

A Nudge From Switzerland

I had a happy day today. On LinkedIn my friend James Ferguson of KWIQLY.com fame popped up with an amusing comment on "Rules of Thumb". I countered and was challenged to get back to work. I thank James for that an this brief returning post is in honor of his support.

As I wrote in April, my 64 year stride was interrupted by circulatory issues caused by poor maintenance. Yes, I do buildings a lot better than my own body. And I am very fussy about cars as well.
I have started a few public presentations by telling the audience I live in a house built in 1853 and on the weekends I drive a 1960 Buick. "And I am here to talk about sustainability and maintenance of assets."
So with a renewed outlook on health and a real desire to share knowledge gained I want to start on many current and critical topics. They include:
Efficiency
Waste
Design for maintenance
Cogeneration & Trigeneration
Delta T.
Absorption
Managerial Politics
and the Supportive Role of Management.
Did you ever sit in a meeting thinking that there is no one in this room I would associate with outside of work.
Have you ever looked at a person and had the conscious thought that no matter now inept or incompetent they seem someone chose them for their job. They did not give it to themselves.
These are thoughts and topics of my mind. I know how to combat these and put on a little smile in the presentation.
Tomorrow I plan a surprise for cogeneration. I am for it  and can make a plant run. Would I want my son to be responsible for construction, start up, and implementation of a plant? Nope!
Find out; we are going places the other guys are scared to go.
Bernie

Back In Circulation

     I  made a commitment when I started this blog. I wanted to write about the things no one wants to say about the politics and management of facilities. In February I found out I runs buildings much more diligently than I do myself. Today marks the sixth week since my double bypass surgery. The fingers of my left hand are a little numb and my left eye is a bit blurry.
     They say when the artery was cut to make the bypass cheeseburgers and french fries spewed forth into the operating room. It took three days to clean up the mess! Now, remember, I am pretty intolerant of operational deficiencies. My lifestyle based on meeting people for lunch, dinner, and three trade organizations who met for buffets every month just escaped my awareness.
     The recovery time gave me an opportunity to dictate the philosophy and procedures of our building optimization programs to my "Berniesitter". Our "Building Harmony" will roll out in late May or early June. I expect our new website "dont-waste-renewables.com" should begin to take shape next week.
     I'm ready! I hope to attract a few co-conspirators for the ride. Keep stopping by.
Thank you, Bernie

A Little Bamboozling

     In the mid 1980's I worked in the energy management department for a major manufacturing company. We had about 200 various departments that we monitored for electrical consumption and published a fat quarterly report distributed to all.

     In the course of our dealing with the departments we found many who took us seriously as well as some down right against our presence. Most were somewhere in between.

      When we plotted the graphs for the report we knew the managers would thumb through and probably only notice pages with some outstanding anomaly. With that in mind we would adjust the graph settings so cooperative departments who put forth an effort would get a smoother line. Belligerent departments  might also be edited to make their usage graphically more dramatic and more noticeable to the bosses. Nasty little devils weren't we!

       So the presentation to those farthest away from understanding the actual use was manipulated by the presenters. That happened 25 years ago. I was young and played into my seniors who thought this up. It is not on my agenda today.

     It could give rise to the idea that a presentation, even today, could be manipulated in the same manner. The farther away from actual use a decision maker is, the more suspect they should be of "strangers bearing gifts".

Value Vs. Budget

A school district had an underground LP gas storage tank to provide fuel for the High School emergency generator. It was the responsibility of the building mechanic to order fuel annually. A recent retirement put a new person in that position. Unaware of this duty, the fuel level became low. This caused a gas smell on the area of the generator.

When reprimanded for the failure to order fuel the new person was told that this was a significant item and cost the district $3200 each year. It was a line item in the budget and had been for many years. Brought to light at the meeting, the cost appeared quite high. The generator automatically exercised for 1 hour every Friday. The local utility was very reliable and outages were infrequent. Given that the base operation was 52 hours per year and outages did not exceed another 4 hours annually, it was questioned how the generator could consume nearly $60 worth of fuel per hour. An investigation found the tank leaked underground. The leakage accounted for about $2600 of the annual budget.

Many times a budget figure is used as a basis for performance. If “X” number of dollars has been spent, we are in line with the budget and things are OK. We meet the budget and do not really know what we spent the money on. It is important to know the value, to micro-manage, every dollar spent.

Utilities and maintenance are ideal places to capture inefficiencies through micro-management. As with the generator fuel mentioned earlier, the ability to step back and analyze individual pieces of equipment or complete systems can bring dramatic cost reduction.  Most managers can do this effectively if their plate is not full already.

Where Does My Footprint Start?

Wouldn’t it be easy if a products carbon footprint started at your threshold? Ah, here it is my new green product! I am so sustainable. It might not be that easy…………

            I have about 20 FLC incandescent bulbs in my house. They range from 60 to 100 watt. They all work. The word on the street is to replace them with compact fluorescent bulbs and be as green as the greenest on my block. Oh, wait! To be green I am going to throw away 20 perfectly usable bulbs? I feel a heart palpitation. Well, OK, maybe I don’t see the big picture.

            Being conscious of green building practices I always want to know the source of products I buy. So I went online and did a Google search for “manufacturers CFL bulbs”. Global Sources.com popped right up. This should give a good representation. Ummmmmmm, 197 manufacturers from mainland China and 16 from Hong Kong. I check the pull down menu, no other countries are found. Wait a minute, let’s check another site. No luck, I only found a bunch of distributors in the US.

            OK, I’m going to be green so I throw away 20 working light bulbs and have replacements shipped from China. Will they be delivered in a Prius? Nah, the water it too deep. So a steam ship or an airplane is going to bring them to the US and they will be trucked to my local outlet. Haven’t I heard about China using a lot of dirty fossil fuel in their manufacturing plants?

            I need to think about this.

            I did notice a slight draft from the edge of the window by my desk. I’m going to get an old newspaper and fold it over enough to fill that crack. Then I am going to sit here just a little longer and think about how I can reduce my carbon footprint.

     Bernie

Hidden Values & a Compressor Tip

Often boardroom discussions for service businesses focus on customer satisfaction. Our conversations lead to the topic of customers who “get it” and those who don’t. How can our service be evaluated by a customer who doesn’t see non-events as the result of efforts? I am not very good at brazing. For the most part I have been in-house employed and had the luxury of maintaining equipment as opposed to the outsourced service who attends to emergencies. The job focus is very different and different skill sets are required.

     Once I worked at a multi-building site which had five walk in freezers. Mostly due to an unstable power grid we had frequent power outages of significant duration. When I came to work with them there was a budget line item for replacement of at least one refrigeration compressor annually, at about $4,500. In my formative years I had learned what damage these outages can do by breaking crankshafts, pistons, and rods upon a return to power. When the first outage hit I ran to all the compressors and closed the suction valve. Then I could perform a supervised start up and avoid compressor damage. I also provided refrigeration wrenches at all the smaller compressors with suction valves. The building mechanics were instructed to isolate the compressor if an outage of more than 20 minutes occurred. In three years we lost no compressors. Since we avoided failures, the brazing skills, little that they were, never got used.

     Along comes the fourth year and we relocated a walk in freezer. The evaporator was in a difficult location and I was moving into bifocal age. I just couldn’t get the joint brazed. I had to bring in a service contractor to finish the job. All hell broke loose. What kind of mechanic can’t braze!

     I guess if we lost more compressors I could have honed my skills. Maybe I “didn’t get it.” That was about 20 years ago. It is amazing how each experience teaches us something…… and how well we remember.

Bernie