WES has been selected to provide energy management services to five (5) municipalities across Pennsylvania as part of the Shared Energy Management (SEM) program under the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP). These services are tailored to each municipality’s needs and goals, and are not a “one size fits all” approach to energy management. WES is specifically partnering with the municipalities to understand what actions and assistance areas can be of greatest benefit to their organizations and communities. Examples of specific technical assistance tasks which WES is performing for the municipalities include:

• Energy Benchmarking
• Energy Star Certification Facility Verification
• Energy Audits & Energy Conservation Measure (ECM) analysis and recommendation for:
  • Municipal Buildings
  • Streetlighting and Traffic Lighting
  • Wastewater Treatment Facilities
• Renewable Energy Feasibility Evaluation, including Solar Photovoltaic (PV) and renewable thermal technologies
• Fleet Analysis, including alternative fuel vehicles
• Energy Management Plan creation
• ECM specification and implementation assistance

Under PA DEP’s SEM program, WES’ goal is to partner with the five municipalities to understand their current energy usage profiles and to help further their objectives of decreasing energy consumption, lowering energy costs, decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, and increasing use of renewable energy. WES has provided similar services for hundreds of clients and sees significant opportunity for these five new partners.

WES offers a unique mix of experience and expertise in solutions for commercial, institutional, and industrial thermal energy decarbonization. This experience and expertise allows WES to provide high value engineering consulting for all phases of project and program implementation.

WES engineers have extensive experience in thermal energy (heating and cooling) system modeling for a vast array of industrial processes, institutional facility settings, and commercial building types.  WES’s approach starts with detailed evaluation of the thermal demands for key portions of a plant or facility.  This requires focusing on both the quality (temperature) and quantity of heat needed.  Once a facility’s thermal demands (quality and quantity) are understood and modeled, WES works with owners to identify solutions for reducing energy use, capturing waste heat, and renewable energy sources to meet thermal needs.  Absolutely paramount in the process is ensuring that the function of the facility is either improved through the capital investments made, or at the very least not impacted.  Thus, WES’s efforts to drive reduced energy use and decarbonization of thermal energy supply are targeted to ensure it does not impact items such as plant production, facility operations, or occupant comfort. 

WES has extensive experience with thermal system energy auditing/metering, efficiency, waste heat capture, and then meeting remaining thermal needs with renewable thermal energy technologies, including the following systems and technologies:

• Metering and system analysis for: steam, thermal oil, air, hot water, chilled water, refrigeration, process exhaust, etc.
• Heat capture and quality improvement, as required, for energy efficiency and to capture other value streams (thermal RECs / carbon offsets)
  • Flue gas condensation
  • Industrial heat pumps
  • Waste heat to power
• Combined heat and power
• Thermal chillers
• Renewable thermal technologies – bioenergy (biomass and biogas), ASHP, GSHP, solar thermal

Thermal Energy Metering / Thermal REC Aggregation & Policy Consulting

WES has extensive and unique experience with the metering and aggregation of thermal RECs and valuing renewable thermal attributes.  WES’s expertise in the value and monetization of renewable thermal attributes includes:

• Value/Market
• Policy drivers in various states where thermal RECs exist in a meaningful way, and states where it is being pursued through legislation
• Detailed design of compliant metering for a wide range of states, compliance schemes, and systems (hot water, steam, air, exhaust gas, thermal oil); bioenergy, solar thermal, ASHP, GSHP
• Aggregation of RECs for and qualification of renewable thermal systems in a variety of states and jurisdictions
• Voluntary market for carbon offsets and carbon accounting
• Federal policy around consideration of the value of renewable thermal energy

Useful Links:

1. ICEF Industrial Heat Decarbonization Roadmap
2. Renewable Thermal Collaborative