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Though Energy Efficiency Improvement Program is evaluated purely based on the monetary savings generated and return on investment, there are many other dimensions to the benefits that can be achieved on account of this program. Following are some of the benefits apart from energy efficiency improvement:
- Facility Upgrade
The efficiency of the equipment in the facility tend deteriorate over a period. When energy efficiency improvement in the facility is taken up, many time equipment need either up-gradation, retrofitting or complete revamp or renovation. This helps in upgrading the facility. The typical examples could be air-conditioning and lighting up-grades in the Commercial Building.
- Capacity Enhancement & Capital Cost Savings
Many times energy efficiency also results into capacity enhancement of the existing equipment, eliminating the need for capital investments. The typical example could be Reducing the steam demand in the process reduces load on the boiler and hence extra steam generating capacity can be made available, reduction in electrical demand through various means would mean additional capacity availability on the transformers and there could be may other examples.
- Increased Throughput
Implementation of some of the energy efficiency measures result into increasing the throughput these benefits had been experienced by Textile, Paper, Glass industries in past. The typical example is reduction in batch time for the reactor to half in a chemical industry, thereby increasing the availability of reactor for production and increase in the production levels. Sometimes, these benefits are far more and outweigh the savings achieved by energy cost reduction.
- Improved Quality
Energy efficiency up-grades also result into improvement in the product quality viz. quality of the product OR improvement in the ambience / working conditions OR improvement in the comfort conditions.
The typical examples are: improvement in the paper quality by improving the water quality through water recycling, improvement in the lighting levels & Colour Rendering Index and reduction in glare through lighting system up-grade for a software company, Improvement in the air conditioning comforts through proper controls. There could be many other areas where improved quality can be experienced.
- Postponement of Capital Investments
Yet another benefit of energy efficiency is postponement of capital investments, since energy efficiency results into capacity enhancement. The case experienced by an ESCO: The chemical company was to invest into additional chiller for cooling the reactor, due to the short capacity of the chiller. The energy efficiency measure recommended has helped that industry to have spare capacity from the same chiller and thus helped postponing the heavy investment in the new chiller.
- Maintenance Cost Reduction
Energy efficiency improvement also results into reducing the maintenance cost on account of reduction in wear and tear of equipment. The cases experienced by ESCO are: Reduction in maintenance of compressor on account of speed reduction & reduction in maintenance cost of pumps on account of reduced wear and tear through speed reduction. Many times it is difficult to quantify these intangible benefits.
- Employee Skills Up grade
The part of the energy efficiency improvement program is training the employees to create awareness about energy and to train them to operate the up-graded system. This helps in up-grading the employee skills. It has been experienced that on account of this training, even the machine operating level people start thinking into this dimension and result into small – small improvements on their own.
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