Sustainable Utility Partnerships Revolutionizing Energy Efficiency Efforts

We are always looking for the next great idea to help solve America’s energy challenges. Our focus is making our clients’ energy infrastructure more resilient, more robust and ready for whatever comes next.

The latest innovation from ENFRA: Sustainable Utility Partnerships (SUP). An outgrowth of the Energy-as-a-Service (EaaS) agreements ENFRA has been employing for more than a decade to help clients realize millions in annual energy savings, Sustainable Utility Partnerships allow Bernhard to share excess energy produced at EaaS partner facilities with other nearby entities who need efficient and reliable power.

Facilities who choose to join as a SUP or with ENFRA can see a host of benefits, including lower greenhouse gas emissions per kilowatt hour used, reduced expansion and renovation costs and a more stable and reliable energy, all without big capital expenditures.

WHAT IS ENERGY AS A SERVICE?

To understand SUP, it’s important to understand the basics of EaaS.

More than ten years ago, an epidemic of deferred maintenance, cobbled-together technologies and failing energy infrastructure was impacting budgets and mission-critical services at hospitals, universities and other large campuses nationwide. Those issues were particularly a problem in ENFRA’s home state of Louisiana, where powerful hurricanes can unexpectedly threaten facilities where lives literally depend on keeping energy flowing. In response, ENFRA helped pioneer the concept of Energy-as-a-Service agreements in the United States.

An emerging market sector that provides an alternative to typical customer-funded or financed energy projects, the EaaS model allows clients to partner with a service provider like ENFRA to manage the client’s complete energy portfolio needs.

Under an EaaS agreement, a large, multi-facility client like a hospital campus agrees to transfer the authority to operate, manage and upgrade on-campus energy systems to ENFRA for a term of years. The client then makes monthly payments to ENFRA for managing those systems. The regular payments are why EaaS is often called a “subscription-based” energy model.

Large facilities go from the uncertainty of never knowing what their energy and infrastructure costs will be month-to-month to knowing what they’ll be exactly with precise consistency. In addition, ENFRA assumes responsibility for keeping the power flowing and fixing anything that breaks. The stress of managing a large operation disappears.

As part of an EaaS agreement, ENFRA substantially upgrades and retrofits partner facilities in a quest for every possible efficiency. Depending on the project, that often means upgrading energy generation and transmission infrastructure to much more efficient systems, including at the EaaS partner’s Central Energy Plant. For many ENFRA clients, the result is annual energy savings totaling millions per year and — in many cases — excess power the campus doesn’t need.

HOW DO SUSTAINABLE UTILITY PARTNERSHIPS WORK?

If upgrades completed by ENFRA during an EaaS partnership result in surplus energy output from the Central Energy Plant (CEP) at a large facility, ENFRA can offer that excess energy to nearby entities who might want to form a SUP. Potential SUP partners could include schools, private businesses or other large facilities that need affordable, reliable, responsibly-produced power.

Once a SUP agreement has been reached, ENFRA covers the upfront costs required to interconnect the CEP to the SUP partner facility. Once the connection has been made, ENFRA implements a series of energy conservation measures at the SUP partner facility to make it much more efficient. These measures may include lighting upgrades and retrofits, retro-commissioning, water conservation, upgrades to controls and more. In exchange, the SUP partner makes a recurring monthly payment to ENFRA under what’s known as a thermal services agreement.

The benefits to SUP partner facilities are much the same as those realized by the original EaaS partner, including much greater efficiency, savings on annual energy bills, more stable energy costs, operations and maintenance cost savings and more.

SUP partners must be within a limited area around a facility upgraded through an EaaS by ENFRA. However, because ENFRA EaaS projects are often located in densely-populated areas, there’s potentially hundreds of organizations located near ENFRA EaaS projects that could benefit from a Sustainable Utility Partnership.

ENFRA is always looking for the next big idea in energy for our clients and partners. Want to see if a Sustainable Utility Partnership with ENFRA could help your organization reach decarbonization goals while saving money through greater efficiency? Visit us online at www.enfrasolutions.com, or call 504-833-8291.