MechChem Africa talks to Tygue Theron, Commercial Head of Energy Partners Intelligence, about the company’s holistic energy offering, from simple behaviour-based ‘war on waste’ efficiency drives to integrated and financed solar generation, refrigeration and energy management services funded via power purchase or shared savings agreements.
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Energy Partners (EP), which was founded in 2008 while the world was experiencing a financial crisis, is today a leading energy service provider, offering energy intelligence solutions; renewable solar and storage systems; heating and cooling as a service; and turnkey plants that come with co-owned and fully outsourced financial service options.
Being part of the PSG Group – which has a market capitalisation in excess of R40-billion and a 30.7% interest in Capitec – Energy Partners is an active investor in the solutions it develops, often eliminating the need for clients to find up-front capital to upgrade and secure their energy futures.
Fundamental to EP’s success is energy optimisation in order to deliver lowest possible consumption, best energy efficiencies and significantly reduced energy costs. The multi-faceted approach used to achieve this includes sourcing and funding the investment capital, implementing solutions and then collecting and monitoring usage and performance on an ongoing basis to ensure that investments remain cash positive from day one to end-of-life.
The role of EP Intelligence
Citing the recent announcement by Gwede Mantashe, South Africa’s Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, of plans to tender for up to 16.8 GW of ‘emergency capacity’ to fill ‘desperate’ current needs, Tygue Theron of EP Intelligence suggests that, for the time these projects are being completed, the country will still face undersupply. “This is where energy reduction can play a vital role,” he argues.
“We act as a supporting partner for our other EP divisions and, for most projects, we will arrive on site first: to do a comprehensive set of measurements to see where energy is needed, how much is being consumed and where we may be able to make a difference. Initially, we set the baseline and identify opportunities. Only then do we get our other divisions involved,” explains Theron.
“We don’t stop there, though. We run ongoing energy management programmes, monitoring the site and making sure that any energy investments are delivering as they should. It’s all about measuring how well everything and everyone is working together,” he adds.
Energy Partner’s client base sits mostly in the commercial sector, Theron continues: “While we don’t impose any limits in terms of clients or technologies, we tend to find that lighting, refrigeration, air conditioning, storage and ventilation are key areas where energy use can be reduced. Sometimes it’s as simple as topping up the refrigerant in a chiller, and sometimes we can replace the whole refrigeration circuit with an ammonium-based system, which can often halve the power draw compared to traditional plants,” he says.
“We at EP Intelligence will identify the opportunity and then pass on our findings – to EP Refrigeration for an ammonium plant, for example, which will take on an upgrade project, secure the capital and then sell on the refrigeration as a service,” Theron explains.
He describes a 10-year ongoing project with one of South Africa’s largest food retailers. “Not only has energy expenditure been reduced over the years, but demand from the national grid has been reduced by enough to power 800 000 homes for a year,” he tells MechChem Africa.
Operating on multiple sites, this was a favourable client for Energy Partners, with relatively few areas of energy consumption: lighting, refrigeration, air conditioning and back-of-house cold rooms and dry shelving areas. “Knowing that every one of this company’s facilities is dealing with thesame things enables us to manage all their sites centrally,” he notes.
He explains that as soon as data begins to be collected and used to produce load profiles, it becomes immediately apparent when power is needed, how much is being used and where it is being wasted. “We also incorporate other known factors such as when stores are open, when the shelves are being stocked and when there is a night shift. By starting to suggest changes, such as turning off half of the lights when employees are stacking shelves, significant savings become apparent. This is easy, we simply install key switches, one for use when stacking shelves and another to switch all the lights on when the store opens for customers,” he tells MechChem Africa.
Across all of this retailer’s sites, EP Intelligence was able to use collected data to build reports with reduction targets. These identified all above-target energy use as waste, and urged every site to implement a war on waste. “This, along with simple behaviour measures adopted by site staff – never leaving fridge or cold room doors open, for example, or never blocking the air ducts of chiller cabinets with over-stacked product – resulted in 37.5% energy savings. Over the
10 years we have been managing energy in this way, we estimate that R2.7-billion has been saved,” Theron says.
Other interventions include replacing dry and brittle seals on cold room doors, installing night blinds over the refrigerated cabinets to better contain the cold air overnight, and many more. “Most are low cost interventions that, combined, contribute to ongoing savings across multiple sites,” he adds.
“On the level above, we have developed procedures to optimise the way cold rooms are packed, so that, wherever possible, they run at full load and best efficiency. We also implemented a general refrigeration maintenance programme. On average, refrigeration units consume 50% of this retailer’s total energy consumption, so keeping units at their best possible efficiency presents an obvious savings opportunity,” he says.
Theron says the behaviour of store managers was, undoubtedly, the lowest hanging fruit for this project. “But we are not done yet. The next step will be to look at changing to modern high-efficiency refrigeration technologies, which we estimate could deliver a further 20% in energy savings,” he continues.
Rolling out solar energy across the chain is another huge opportunity, which Theron suggests can feasibly contribute between 5.0 and 50% of ongoing energy needs in typical commercial and industrial enterprises, depending on the roof size and the location of the facility. PV-solar systems directly reduce grid-based demand and costs, while also contributing to reducing grid dependence and associated tariff uncertainty.
“Tariff optimisation is another key and often missed issue with respect to energy optimisation,” Theron continues. “Of all the clients I see, I find 30% of them are on the wrong tariff, which means they have tariff switching options available to them that will immediately reduce their monthly bills.
“Many commercial and industrial users are on demand-based tariffs, where a single rate is applied depending on the maximum demand. The alternative is a time-of-use tariff, which is almost always better, typically reducing monthly bills based on the identical consumption profile by 10% to 15%.
“Because our national grid problem is related to peak demand, it makes sense, for everyone, to encourage people to shift their time-of-use to lower demand and lower cost time periods –the City of Cape Town has already begun to shift all users onto time-of-use tariffs. When paying three to four times more for energy at peak times, it becomes easy to persuade companies to find ways of rescheduling consumption to lower cost periods,” he explains.
Renewable energy and PPAs
Theron notes that there is now “huge value from multiple perspectives” of adopting renewable energy solutions such as solar power. The benefits are far larger than simply costs. One of our healthcare clients, for example, is achieving an additional 30% in cost savings, simply because the solar system has reduced the peak demand charges on the utility bill.
“Through EP Solar, we can deliver client-funded turnkey energy plants, but in current leaner times, it is more common for us to set up a power purchase agreement (PPA) for a period of 25-years to attract an investor,” he says, adding that PPA tariffs are typically 30%-40% below the grid rate.
“When coupled with other energy management and efficiency initiatives, multiple benefits accrue: for users, investors and for the national grid, which will be better off in the long term if demand is reduced to better match its generation capacity,” Theron argues.
“We in South Africa have among the highest solar yield in the world, along with very favourable temperature profiles, so solar is an ideal technology for us. But it still needs to be coupled with storage if we are to help solve current network problems of peak loading in the morning and early evening. We estimate that by 2023, payback periods on a battery-based storage solutions will drop to as little as five years,” he says.
Turning attention back to the current national grid crisis, Theron argues that South Africa cannot continue to increase capacity in order to “fix a broken system”. “We can’t simply carry on adding capacity and running it inefficiently.
“Currently, 26 of South Africa’s largest companies consume roughly 40% of the country’s energy. Reducing these
companies’ energy consumption by focusing on solutions such as energy storage, renewable energy, process optimisation, power quality and general energy efficiency, can not only enable them to lessen the strain they place on the grid, but it will also significantly reduce their operational costs,” Theron concludes.
