Small Scale Renewables: Are They Worth It?



Anyone for Hydroelectric power?


Climate change is everywhere you go. Government initiatives and independant reports all point to one solution: going Green. But how do you go Green? Is it worth it?

Large scale renewable energy production is probably the easiest way for the consumer to go Green, just switch provider. But for businesses, is small scale renewable energy production worth it's outlay?

Is it worth it?

This has been a contentious issue for quite some time. My suspicion is that a propaganda war between those in favour and those who arent has jaded the public view somewhat. For example, the view that wind turbines generate less than they cost to put them up in the first place is quite frankly, baloney.

If there was never a return on wind turbines, the government wouldn't have invested so heavily in offshore wind farms. There's also a brilliant example of a privately owned wind farm in Kent. A neigbourhood managed to achieve backing from a major bank to fund the construction of their very own wind farm. The bank would not have invested had there been no return. These villagers now recieve money from the grid for the electricity they put into it. Their meters go backwards.

There are all sorts of other examples of where people are harnessing renewable energy on a smaller scale. Whether it's PV solar panels or wind turbines, right the way through to composting (which isn't technically renewable), people are doing it.

For any business it will be dependant on the situation so it's worth seeing what resources are available to you locally. Doing the maths is easy, so why not give it a try?

If local energy is hard to come by, you should be focusing heavily on efficiency. Payback on more efficient machinery is generally very short and will mean that renewables may just become an option as your consumption reduces.

Paying Too Much for Water?

People don't usually consider water as a resource, but it is exactly that. You pay for it, you use it, then you pay for someone to clean it. The cost of fresh water is relatively high, when you think it is essential.

Businesses in specific can both improve their water efficiency and cut their bills substantially by taking simple, uncostly measures. Some of these are listed below:

1. Push button faucets. Instead of the standard turn or raise faucets, push down valves can be installed. This will regulate flow through the tap and limits the amount of time the tap is on. These are cheap to buy and cheap to install and it will mean that a tap is never left running.

2. Specialised shower heads. If there are showers on your premises, shower heads which restrict flow through can be installed. Again, these are cheap and easy to put into place and are designed to reduce the amount of flow without losing the pressure in your shower. Staff will most likely not notice any change.

3. Toilet cistern displacers. A bag or bottle filled with water and sealed (up to a volume of around 3 litres) can be placed inside the cistern of your toilet leaving less volume for water to fill after a flush. Therefore, the next flush will use less water and the cistern will fill up less each time. Again, a cheap and effective way to reduce water use by 3 litres per flush.

4. Waterless urinals. Urinals which don't flush are now commonplace in public toilets and aren't considered any less hygeinic than normal. They do not use any water and are not supplied by a plumbing system so maintenance is virtually non-existant.

5. An instant hot water device in staff kitchens will reduce the load on kettles and the waster produced by manually overfilling and cleaning kettles. Although the initial costs will be high, so make sure you determine the payback period before pursuing.

6. A dishwasher. A fully loaded dishwasher uses less water per piece of crockery than hand washing and is far more hygeinic. Again, initial costs will be relatively high but if demand on water for dishwashing is high then there ought to be a short payback period.

7. Rainwater harvesting. If your business is situated in a particularly rainy area, water harvesting is a great way to retain FREE water and use it for purposes that usually cost. It isn't drinkable, but it can be used in toilets and washing machines after only basic treatment.

Your Voice Counts

This is a bit off topic today but it's very important.

There's an organisation called Avaaz that give you the voice to change the World. They are an online petitions site and they write to governments and politicians about global issues. They need you and everyone you know to sign these petitions. There's no catch, it's easy, free and rewarding. They've certainly been busy, writing to World leaders on issues no less that 25 million times in 3 years. They work hard to get things done, the least you can do is put your name down.

Click the link below to sign up. You only need to do it once and it's really quick. Then all you do is enter your email address on the petitions you want to support. Please do it!
http://www.avaaz.org/

Here's a list of some of the big things that Avaaz have achieved:

• Save our seas: Britain comitted to doubling the size of protected ocean
• Elephants: the UN comitted to protecting African Elephants from extinction
• Rainforests: a public outcry in Brazil prevented much of the Amazon Rainforests from being felled for profit
• Haiti: Avaaz members donated $1,300,000 worth of aid in the wake of the devastating earthquake
• Tibetan friends: 1.5million signatures persuaded the Chinese government to resume talks with the Dalai Lama
• These amongst 25,000,000 other actions so far mean that your voice will be heard

Need any more convincing? Just visit their site and read their highlights section:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/highlights/

Thanks for reading,

Craig

Saving Water for Industrial Sites

Production plants and other industrial sites tend to use water for a number of different processes. This usage is usually relatively high, probably around 30-50000m³ per year. Therefore, it is essential for businesses in this situation to have a viable strategy to continually reduce water use to keep costs down.

This post will outline a strategy I have recently developed in my job which has the benefit of supplying information on:

-          Volumes of water used in real time,

-          Where these volumes of water are going.

Most industrial premises will have one water feed from the mains water network which supplies to all activities on site. This is metered and you will be billed based on the meter readings from this point. After this, do you know how much water supplies each aspect of your operation? The step by step guide below provides you with a sure-fire way to save water. You will have to do the research yourself to see if the pay-back period is short enough for your business, as there will be initial capital expenditure.

1.       Do you know where your sub-surface pipes are? If not, you should contract a company to scan for all underground water pipes. They will supply you with a CAD plan of your site with the pipe network plotted.

2.       Check underground for leaks. The same company as mentioned in step 1 will probably do this for you as part of the contract. If not, try and get them to. They cannot quantify any leaks to you, but it is certainly worthwhile.

3.       Check for above surface leaks. The first thing you should do is check all above ground pipes for leaks and have these repaired. Try to keep as detailed a record of them as possible, including costs. If you can, hold a jug under the leak for a set period of time and calculate a cost. This will all be useful in justifying the project and you can eventually quantify savings.

4.       Make sure you’re being billed right. Again, the company from step 1 will probably do a billing audit for free for you, which could end up in you receiving a rebate from any time within the last six years. It’s definitely worth the effort.

5.       Contact your supplier. Most suppliers will provide daily consumption data to you on request. There may be a charge for this service but it is small (around £100). Get as much data as you can from them. It will help you to calculate the possible savings to be made.

6.       Research the benefits of using a Smart Metering system across your site. They are a set of flow meters which can transmit data to a server allowing you real time access to your water consumption. These are to be installed at strategic points across site to isolate each process or set of equipment.

7.       Build a report suggesting the installation of Smart Metering. Your annual savings should be based on the below equation, where: Q_max(n) = a “savings limit”, q = total consumption on day n, and n = date (in number of days since first day of data).

     

      This works on the assumption that it would take two days to fix a problem which causes a spike in usage. Therefore, what you should do is subtract this “savings limit” for each day from the consumption data and remove all negative values. Add together all positive values and this will give you a total saving of water. Multiply this by the cost of water, divide by the number of days in the sample and multiply by 365 and you will have your total annual saving in £ or $.

8.       This saving should justify the initial expenditure on the system if the process highlighted in the flow diagram below is followed. In this diagram, v = the average difference in consumption from one day to the next and the other numbers are the same as the equation above.

Using the process above and the Smart Meter system, will ensure that your business continually reduces (where possible) water consumption until it converges on a level which is impossible to reduce any further.

I hope this helps! I'm currently in the process of getting this system installed for our site and if  you have any feedback or have noticed any problems, or indeed have any questions, please get in touch.

Best wishes.

Environmental Aspects and Impacts of your Business

The aspects of your business are any processes which  occur on your premises and the impacts are the associated effects these processes have on the environment, considered in both global and local contexts.

If you have a large site (eg. production plant), this should be zoned off into either process groups or spatial zones.

For each zone, set up a spreadsheet with two tabs, one for aspects and another for corresponding impacts. There will be a lot of desk based study to ascertain every process which incurs an emission or effect on the surroundings.

Once you have identified every aspect in each zone, these need to be broken down into the following:

• Water
• Air
• Waste
• Energy
• Soil
• Other (eg. noise or light pollution).

For each aspect you have identified, you should assess the impacts this has on each of the above areas. For example, one aspect we may have is a cooling system for machinery which circulates water to cool another component. For this aspect, you should identify each impact:

• Water: any overflow which goes to drain may contain substances from process and will contain  biocide and corrosion inhibitor.
• Air: if the biocide is ineffective, there is a possibility of legionella being transmitted through water vapour.
• Waste: changing filters, although not often, incurs waste in the form of recyclable plastics.
• Energy: Electric motors pump water and power propellors to cool water. Their electricity consumption is x kWh per year. Also, water consumption from top-up is 20000 cubic metres per year.
• Soil: any overflow soaks away into ground. Biocides and corrosion inhibitors can enter the ground water and contaminate soil.
• Other: Pumps and fans run 24 hrs per day and typically produce x decibels of sound.

Where possible, you should quantify each impact as is shown in the Energy section. This is important where contamination is concerned. You should have regulations set by governmental bodies regarding the concerntrations of contamination you are "allowed". You must ensure that you know your limits and know whether you are exceeding them, as that is a serious issue.

You should then devise a scoring system with two axes. One which is a score of local significance and another which is a score of global significance. For example, a good idea is to plot an x and y axis. Label your x axis Local Significance and the y axis Global Significance. Put 3 equally spaced ticks on each line and plot 9 squares within the axes. along the x axis, number the ticks 1, 3, 10. Up the y axis, label the ticks 2, 6, 20. Then place the product of each tick in the 9 boxes, so the upper right box will be 200, the lower left box will be 2. An example of this is shown below.
You should select your criteria for significance based on your regulation limit values and global media and press. If something is a hot topic, it must be addressed as it can incur a bad public image.

You should follow this process every two years or so or every time a new procedure or piece of equipment is put into place and if you start finding a lot of "200" scores, think about action plans to reduce these.

These scores should be calculated based on questions you set yourself and should be worked out for each impact of every aspect.

Eventually, you will have created a matrix which assesses every emission, energy use and procedure. Finally, you will need to total up all emissions of the same contaminant to ensure you don't exceed your limits. Therefore, a final "zone" should be considered as an overall view of your premises.

This process is a standard and is required for some businesses to confirm to auditors that they comply with government regulations.