Time is of the essence, what can I do immediately to lower my electrical energy costs? Answer: work with an expert like Usource. This is not a plug by any means to hire the unregulated arm of Unitil Electric.  But I’m not here to give you bad advice, so here is an example of someone (a company) who can help you lower your costs.  Their YouTube video will cover it very well.  The nutshell version goes like this:

+++

1) The future increasingly high costs of electrical energy capacity (previously baked into the pie at ISO-NE) are coming for several years and there is NOTHING you can do to stop it short of using less power (or producing some yourself) and/or shifting the time of use.

+++

2) There is no transmission line or pipeline in New Hampshire, or anywhere else for that matter, that is going to be here to save you in the short term, if ever (future topic).

+++

3) Stop bitching about your high electrical costs in New Hampshire, and how you can’t grow jobs here, or have to go to Mexico or South Carolina or Arizona or whatever ……… and put your big boy pants on and DO something to help yourself ….. now!

+++

4) Doing something yourself includes taking steps to use less power and/or generate some of your own.  The bigger you are (Big Manufacturer v. Small Manufacturer) the better economy of scale you have to install your own generation ……… the two most probable contenders of which would Solar PV and/or CHP (combined heat and power ….. a.k.a. co-generation or fuel cells).  Banks have lots of cheap money to loan ……and you can also explore other options like the CDFA for loan programs they offer.  Use a little capital, then do the math and see what kind of IRR you can generate. Leave the old corporate rule of thumb (2 year simple payback) analysis for companies that don’t know enough to leverage a little capital $$ into 25+ years of earnings for your stockholders.

+++

5) Doing something yourself could also include lowering your demand profile (curve) during the exact period, and time of day, that your connected utility (distribution franchise) measures your electrical demand and then charges you for it 365 days a year!  There are technology companies out there like Sharp Electronics who have developed financing programs for “Commercial SmartStorage+Solar Hybrid Projects” to do this exact thing for companies like you.  Again, not a plug for Sharp, just the facts.

+++

6) Complete doing #4 and #5 above and no matter what happens in the future, you will spend less on your electrical energy costs.  There will be other things you can do as well, that we can talk about later…….like adding in “efficiency” measures and new technologies.

+++

We’ll get into more discussions in later posts that deal with ISO-NE, transmission lines and pipelines, etc. ……..and some actions New Hampshire government could do that might help you out.  But for now, in the famous words of former Celtics Coach  Rick Pitino: “Larry Bird is not coming through that door . … Robert Parish is not coming through that door”  Another words, nobody is coming to save us (you) soon, and it is what it is. Deal with it.