BC Hydro's Regional Energy Managers helped industrial and large commercial customers access incentives and programs to make big savings last year.
Big opportunities for industrial and large commercial customers
For many years, our Regional Energy Managers (REMs) have been helping industrial and large commercial customers find new ways to make significant energy savings.
If you're an industrial customer using between 0.5 and 4 GWh a year or a large commercial customer with a combined annual consumption of 2+ GWh, then you're eligible for REM help. They'll work with you to determine your eligibility for incentives or programs and guide you through the application process from beginning to end.
BC Hydro's Regional Energy Managers, Ida Keung, Gregory Wees, and Vishal Iyer support industrial and large commercial customers all over B.C., working with all kinds of customers, including manufacturing facilities, food and beverage processing facilities, greenhouses and laboratories.
Get help finding savings you didn't know existed
There are many ways our Regional Energy Managers can support your business to conserve energy or find savings:
1. Incentives for energy efficiency projects
REMs' can help you successfully apply for our different incentive programs for capital upgrades:
- Self-serve incentive program (SIP): Incentives for efficient lighting and compressed air upgrades.
- Custom incentives: Incentives for larger and/or more complex energy efficient capital upgrades.
- Continuous optimization: Retro-recommissioning for large commercial facilities.
2. Integrated energy audits and feasibility studies
If you're eligible, you can get up to 100% funding for a BC Hydro Alliance energy consultant to conduct an integrated energy audit of an entire facility, including:
- Energy efficiency: Optimizing energy use at your sites and facilities to reduce energy consumption, including customer-based power generation that offsets energy use.
- Efficient electrification: Implementing projects that help your business decarbonize using advanced technologies that improve energy efficiency and reduce overall demand on the grid.
- Demand response: Demand response asks you to adjust or shift electricity use during peak demand events, between November – March, helping support grid reliability while earning rewards.
- Load displacement: Generating power within a facility using clean and renewable sources for internal consumption—and storage if possible—for better demand management.
Or, if you want to focus on opportunities in specific areas or systems and build a business case for your project, we also offer up to 100% funding on a feasibility study to help you determine if a project will save enough to qualify for our incentive programs.
3. Demand response
Your business can earn financial incentives with our demand response program by shifting or reducing electricity use during periods of peak demand.
When you participate, you'll be invited to participate in short, scheduled demand response events. These are typically up to four hours long and run between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. During these events, customers shift a portion of their typical electricity use to before or after the event window.
You'll earn $50 per average kilowatt (kW) of demand reduction saved over the course of the season's events. The more load that is shifted or reduced, the greater the incentive. For more information please visit our demand response program webpage.
4. Reduce your power factor
Along with retrofits, Regional Energy Managers can also help your business monitor their overall consumption and try to avoid power factor surcharges caused by inefficient machinery or behaviour. "A high power factor is not only wasteful, but it can also affect neighbouring facilities and our ability to supply them with sufficient power," says Ida.
"Recently, we've seen huge success in some special offers for our areas where the demand on the grid is reaching peak demand."
What kind of savings are possible?
Over the last year, our REMs have completed 82 projects that collectively saved 14.35 GWh. At the current average business rate of $0.10 per kWh, that’s $1.43m of savings—or enough to power over 1,400 homes for a year.
The REM team helped one customer make annual savings of a whopping 5.085 GWh with a large LED lighting upgrade. The cost of the project was $2m, which qualified for a $1m incentive from BC Hydro. With annual energy savings of over $500,000, payback will take just two years.
Even some of the smaller opportunities uncovered by an integrated energy audit can be quite an eye-opener. For instance, a single quarter-inch leak from an air compressor could result in $7,500 in additional power costs.
How can a Regional Energy Manager help you?
To find out more about how a Regional Energy Manager could help your business, call 604 522 4713 in the Lower Mainland or 1 866 522 4713 elsewhere in B.C.