Companies conserve energy to earn incentive

The steady advance of utility costs in the past couple of years means energy-conservation investments increasingly pencil out, and northern Nevada companies are spending money to save money.

Sure Bet, a Sierra Pacific Power Co. rebate program for business energy conservation, has a lengthy waiting list after applicants nabbed the $400,000 available for rebates in 2006 within a few weeks of the start of this year.

And the pace of business investment in energy-conservation measures continues even though Sierra Pacific's rates are expected to remain stable at least through the end of this year.

Much of the investment comes in new light fixtures.

"Lighting usually has the fastest payback," says Karen McGinley, a project engineer with the Sure Bet program. "It has the biggest bang for the buck."

Pro-Line Printing, for instance, converted 235 metal halide lighting fixtures to narrow-diameter fluorescent light tubes at its printing plant in Reno.

The company hopes to save 10 percent off its power bills, says Steve Hare, vice president and general manager.

"We're a 24-7 operation, so our lights are on constantly," he says.

Along with potentially significant savings, Pro-Line also saw improved lighting in one area, lighting that was twice as bright after it made the change.

While the payback for the lighting conversion made sense on its own merits, Pro-Line got further encouragement from a SureBet incentive of $100 for each halide lighting fixture that it converted to fluorescent.

Triad Plastics Technology, meanwhile, has found big energy savings 88 percent less power use from new energy efficient plastics-molding equipment.

"It's incredible how efficient these things are," says President Greg Latimer.

Triad, which updates its equipment on a three-year cycle, last year replaced four of its seven molding machines with the new technology.

The energy savings, Latimer says, pay for the added cost of energy-efficient equipment within three years.

And he says the company had made its decision even before it learned that incentives might be available from the power company.

"That," he says, "was a sweetener."

By contrast, as Saint Mary's Health Network planned its energy conservation strategy in recent years, it focused specifically on work where power company rebates would speed the payback.

Don Stafford, the director of facilities for Saint Mary's, says the organization began with upgraded lighting, and moved on to bigger items such as replacement of old air-handling systems with energy-efficient new equipment.

Saint Mary's earned a $5,800 rebate for upgrading lighting controls in a garage an upgrade that cost only $6,500, Stafford says.

After the $400,000 earmarked for energy-conservation rebates this year was committed within a few weeks, Sierra Pacific Power asked the state's Public Utilities Commission for permission to allocate more.

The rebates come from the money that Sierra Pacific charges its customers. Thus, a higher allocation requires the PUC's approval. The application still is under review.

The basic thought, McGinley says, is this: If major customers save electricity, Sierra Pacific and ultimately its ratepayers can delay the construction of costly new power plants or reduce the amount of expensive power purchased on the wholesale market.

Sierra Pacific reserves 25 percent of the Sure Bet incentives for small businesses. Large customers can receive as much as $100,000 each.

Even though the fund for Sierra Pacific's Nevada customers has been allocated, Sure Bet still has about $30,000 available in rebates for the company's customers near Lake Tahoe in California.

McKinley notes, too, that Sure Bet is getting proactive with its conservation incentives, offering cash to builders who invest in energy-efficient systems upfront.

Those incentives, she says, are intended to help developers bridge the cost gap between less-expensive components and the typically more expensive equipment that uses less power.

KEMA Inc. manages the Sure Bet program for Sierra Pacific and its sister company, Las Vegas-based Nevada Power.