More Green Incentives
There are utility incentives and rebates that will help reduce energy costs. These will vary by utility and location. New incentives are constantly being added to these programs. Some utilities are even saying they want enterprises to buy less power because of the construction costs associated with new generation and transmission facilities. Here are some incentive program types that should be investigated:
Look at the Demand Response Programs at California’s PG&E. Go to their Technical Assistance and Technology Incentive Programs. The enterprise may qualify to receive an incentive totaling $250 per kilowatt of verified load reduction capability associated with the installation of recommended enabling technologies. There is also a carbon footprint calculator and business tools for tracking your energy use.
PG&E also has a Virtualization/Server Consolidation Projects Incentive. They offer financial incentives to customers who undertake IT virtualization projects that result in the removal of computing equipment. The incentive is based on the amount of energy saved, predicted through a calculation model. This can work to be about $150 to $300 per server removed. Further, a credit of as much as 8 cents/kWh can be accrued for energy saved due to virtualization.
Ontario’s Toronto Hydro has a Business Incentive Program that includes multi-use commercial, office, retail, private institution, grocery store, hotel properties under 25,000 square feet and multi-unit residential and industrial properties. Commercial properties greater than 25,000 square feet, excluding multi-unit residential and industrial properties, are subject to Ontario Power Authority approval.
Connecticut Light and Power offers a Small Industrial and Commercial Loans Program that provides an interest-free loan for the installation of electric energy-saving measures. The maximum loan is $100,000 with a minimum of $5,000, with up to a five-year loan payback period.
Alliant Energy-IPL in Iowa offers custom rebates available to retail electric and/or natural gas commercial, industrial and agricultural customers. Custom rebates are generally offered for retrofit and replacement projects. Energy-efficient equipment installed as part of a new construction project may still qualify for the Custom Rebates program. For new construction projects, the enterprise is encouraged to consider the Commercial New Construction program. This provides free energy design assistance and cash incentives to owners and developers who build energy efficiency into their projects before construction begins.
Energy Efficiency Certificates (EEC) are new and not well understood. The enterprise’s consumption baseline is verified by a third-party agency. After the enterprise completes an energy efficiency project, it has to be verified by the third party. The increase in energy efficiency is reported to the local utility. The utility then issues an EEC to the enterprise. EECs carry monetary value, based on a price per megawatt-hour (mWh), which varies between $1 and $30 per mWh. The third party usually keeps a small portion of the certificates, or charges a fee based on mWh saved for verification services.
IBM announced their Energy Efficiency Certificate (EEC) program in late 2007. IBM became the first vendor to offer hardware that specifically qualifies for EEC projects. IBM certifies its servers for EEC project eligibility. System z mainframes and System p AIX machines are eligible. System i proprietary machines (which can be used to support 3Com and Siemens IP Telephony), System x X64-based machines, and storage arrays will be eligible in 2008.
The utility incentives are continually increasing and improving. Do not assume that the utility offerings of today will be the same next year. Regularly review what they offer. If your enterprise has requested consulting help from the utility, go back to those individuals to get an update on the incentive changes. Discuss new power-consuming projects with the utility well before staring the project. Make energy efficiency part of the IT and network equipment process. It is very likely that your enterprise has already missed some incentives. Don’t miss the future incentives.
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