
How our cohort program shares learning across B.C.
In the six years since we first featured our strategic energy management cohort program, teams from facilities all across B.C. have benefitted from the cohort's fully funded shared learning experience.
For each cohort, an energy expert leads a group of 10 to 12 industrial customers through a two-year program to implement a holistic approach to energy management. With individual coaching and group workshops, you'll learn how your business can save energy immediately and develop a strong foundation for continuous energy improvement.
Cohort topics include:
- Setting your organization's energy efficiency goals and priorities.
- Preparing individuals to lead energy efficiency efforts at your organization.
- Training staff to identify energy waste at your facility.
- Identifying energy waste with diagnostic tools and site walk-throughs.
- Measuring, tracking and reporting on energy efficiency improvements and savings over time.
Perfect timing
A recent cohort participant was Skretting's Vancouver facility. Skretting is a global leader in innovative and sustainable nutritional aquaculture solutions and services. Headquartered in Norway with production facilities in 18 countries on five continents, Skretting manufactures and delivers 3+ million tonnes of high quality feeds annually for more than 60 species of fish and shrimp.
We sat down with Carlos Mendoza, production manager for Skretting in Vancouver, and Chris Smith, a strategic energy management coach from Energy 350, who provides consulting services for Skretting.
"We were just discussing our action plan to achieve our sustainability goals for the year when we found out about the cohort program from BC Hydro in a newsletter. The timing was perfect," says Carlos. "I went to an initial session and as soon as I joined and understood the methodology, I knew it felt right – it's effectively free support."
Skretting management agreed, and Carlos' team signed on for Cohort 9.
Simple opportunities identified big savings
To kick things off, Carlos and Chris gathered a group of about 10 Skretting employees and energy efficiency engineers together and spent a full day reviewing all aspects of the facility. "We put everything we discovered in a table and began classifying them," says Carlos. "This made it so much easier to see the bigger picture, pick out the low effort, high impact items and assign priorities and resources."
Carlos and Chris took a straightforward but very effective approach to look for opportunities: "Our plant is 90 to 95% automated," says Carlos. "So we looked at it during regular operation and began analyzing everything that was running. Then we started asking whether each one really needed to be running."
What they discovered surprised them both.
A pair of six-ton kernel bins each require two fans to recirculate air. "These fans are 5 horsepower each, so that's a total of 20 horsepower running 24 hours a day, five days a week," says Carlos. "But they only need to be running when the bins are full – which is about 20% of the time. So we went into the automation system and set some new parameters for them. It took us a couple of hours, that's all."
Newly introduced products in Skretting's portfolio had different characteristics that didn't need any vacuum to be produced. However, a 30 horsepower (hp) vacuum pump was still running all the time. "Again, some simple adjustments to the automation system and we were able to significantly reduce the run time."
And finally, there were the condensing units. "We had condensing units cooling all the way down to 19°C during the summer when we only needed to be cooling to 25°C," says Carlos. "But in Vancouver, we very rarely go above 24°C. So again, we just needed to reset the parameters."
The pair generated many more items in their list, but the savings just from these three simple opportunities added up to an amazing 137,500 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year or the equivalent of 1,460 kilograms of Co2 per year. To put that in perspective, that's enough to power over 12 homes for a year (assuming an average home consumes 11,000 kWh annually).
Why the cohort works so well
As you might expect, Carlos is a big advocate for the cohort program: "Getting to meet a bigger group with lots of experience and who share ideas for free is so useful. It's easy to be aware of things and keep promising yourself that you'll fix them, but with the cohort you actually get them done and start enjoying the benefits over and over, which is great for the long term."
The cohort has also been great for Carlos' career, as Chris points out: "When we started this program, Carlos was a process engineer but has recently been made production manager. I'd like to think that among all his other great qualities, Carlos is the king of questioning the status quo, and the cohort gave him a platform to do that and find some huge savings for Skretting."
Come and join our next cohort
We're looking for businesses to join our next cohort. If your business or facility uses between 3 and 15 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year and you have access to your facility's electricity use and production data, ask us about signing up for the strategic energy management cohort program.
Contact your Key Account Manager or Regional Energy Manager, or call 604 522 4713 in the Lower Mainland or 1 866 522 4713 elsewhere in B.C.