QUANTUM CONSULTING, INC. » energy saving

RATIONALE

admin — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:25:05 +0000

The market for process optimization (through the MWRP) in small and medium sized facilities has not been addressed for the following reasons:
•= Small and medium facilities have limited resources and generally cannot fund $100,000
process audits.
•= Engineering firms are interested in meeting discharge permits. During a particularly insightful interview, a wastewater engineer, when asked if he would ever consider identifying the minimum amount of energy required to keep a facility in compliance stated that “I’m not in the business of saving energy. I’m in the business of meeting permit.” This view permeates an industry that views its role as offering operator friendly” solutions. These firms are frankly not interested in working with and educating operators on their facility. The QC/BacGen Team has a successful track record of providing operators with the training and tools to reduce energy related expenses.
•= The QC/BacGen Team has a deep understanding of system biology and energy use.
Engineering firms that serve the wastewater industry take a more mechanical approach, usually resulting in increases to energy costs, e.g. increased filtration.

The specific market barriers facing the market for process optimization are as follows;

•= Lack of availability – Consulting engineers for the industry are focused on meeting permit with only passing reference to real energy savings. As the anecdote above implies, the wastewater-consulting engineers will not move to fill the needed void anytime soon.

•= Lack of consumer information/asymmetric information – The wastewater industry is
conservative and generally views anything new with skepticism. Local government’s are tightening their belts and are unwilling to fund many new projects. While larger urban cities have sufficient information on optimization techniques, those in smaller rural communities do not.

•= Bounded Rationality – While on paper, it would appear that process optimization is the appropriate solution for the majority of facilities, few rural communities do it without full funding. Operators are busy, and likely too busy to investigate the efficacy of each energy efficiency claim. Too busy to gather funding. Too busy to do the proper vetting required for any outlay of city funds.

Energy Saving

admin — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:38:00 +0000

Facilities that are designed for flow rates of 4 million gallons per day, will operate at such rates even if current flow rates are half that. Without accurate monitoring and controls, facilities will consume energy at rate based upon their capacity, not current flow rates. While many facilities have the necessary monitoring and control capabilities to manage their energy consumption, these are generally urban or suburban facilities. These control and monitoring systems are rare in small to medium rural communities – communities that need to operate their facilities for today’s needs, not those in 20 years. To restate, the foundation of this project rests on two primary facts in the wastewater industry, particularly true for small to medium facilities;

•= Facilities are typically designed for a 20 year-life, under “worst case” conditions,
without risk of failure, and
•= These same facilities, particularly small to medium, are designed without significant
process control technologies and therefore are required to pay tomorrow’s O&M costs
today.
These over-engineered facilities lead to excessive energy expenditures in communities that are struggling to balance their budgets. It is our view that the 25 to 75 percent savings achieved by facilities, through our program that modifies facility operation using state-of-the-art monitoring and controls, would be welcomed relief to rural California communities.
The MWRP, quite simply, turns down the use of aeration equipment. Through sophisticated modeling of facility biology, installation of real-time biological data collection equipment, proprietary software modeling, and system controls, the MWRP will cause significant reduction in energy and demand in the rural municipal wastewater sector.

Energy Saving is very important for us.

Quantum Consulting and MWRP

admin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:37:10 +0000

Quantum Consulting and BacGen Technologies (Team) are proposing the MWRP as an opportunity to achieve significant energy savings, with significant demand reduction, while leveraging investments already made by PG&E and The California Energy Commission. The MWRP has been successfully implemented in four facilities in the Central Valley of California, with an additional four facilities expected by March 2002. On an annual basis, we expect energy savings of approximately 40 percent from a program directed at demand reduction – demand reduction is expected to be more than 50 percent during the peak hours of Noon to 8:00 PM.2 These reductions are significant and likely unmatched by other options for the same price.
While the wastewater industry can be complicated, the MWRP is predicated on two simple points:

•= Wastewater facilities are generally over-engineered (i.e. use too much aeration, and
therefore to much energy), and
•= With proper monitoring/sensors in place, equipment aeration equipment can be
cycled without compromising system integrity.

These two points stem from a general fact in the wastewater treatment industry – facilities pay for tomorrow’s operations and maintenance (O&M) today. That is, given significant construction costs, facilities are built for a twenty-year time horizon, leading to over-capacity.