Save your energy

Mike Gaffney of Alaris is reassuringly pragmatic about port energy savings: “Focus on the costs, get those down; the environmental component will usually sort itself out.”

However, he also issues an equally pragmatic warning: “You need to know what your current energy costs are and what the components of those costs are, so that a good financial analysis can be done. You should only take on the things that give a good rate of return,” he says. “There’s little point in looking at, for example, an expensive lighting upgrade of a car park if the power is cheap at night.”

“Typically there are ideas that don’t always work out in practice as they save only a minimal amount. The problem is if you make the wrong decisions you don’t make big enough changes to justify the effort involved,” he says, resulting in loss of faith in the process for all concerned.

So it’s important that people see what is happening and because of this, smart metering is a particularly useful intervention as it shows up where and when the biggest consumers cut in; the newer meters can also help out with a few minutes of timed shut down on non-essential systems, all together giving a useful return.

It’s also worthwhile casting an eye over the technology and checking the set up: “In one place we found electric motors weren’t being supplied with the right voltage; it was only a drop of few percent in efficiency but taken together it still came to a significant amount.”

Further, investigation can unearth some surprises. “One facility’s metering and overall bill just didn’t match up. We went round and round but couldn’t work it out – until we unearthed a very old junction box which, unknown to anyone, was feeding electricity through to the competitors next door.”

Starting point

On the other side of the world in more ways than one, Uwe von Bargen of Bremenports is very much an environmentalist, but again he is sensible about the reality of the challenges, making the point that energy efficiency measures depend very much on where you start.

He explains that Germany has been playing the energy efficiency game for quite a long time, so that changes in the port facilities in Bremen and Bremerhaven “are better done whenever there’s a need for maintenance” rather than on some huge programme simply because they don’t have so far to reach. But by way of contrast he says a port with a less developed energy efficiency plan may find a huge changeover project may well give some startlingly good results. And of course, he adds “there are very large savings that can be found at the very beginning” which should give heart to those looking for opportunities.

Despite this, Mr Gaffney says that there’s almost always room to get creative: “Reefer containers are typically one of the largest draws, and there’s a significant difference in energy consumption between newer units and older, less maintained ones. One idea looked at was to put solar panels in on top, which both shades them and helps with the load. This reduces the energy consumption as well as reducing the energy demand cost.”

On this note Mr von Bargen adds “if the management signals the right strategy, you get new ideas” and in Bremerhaven it’s on people’s minds enough that the port staff are able and willing to look for all sorts of efficiency savings. Mr Gaffney is right behind him on this: “The biggest difference comes from a cultural shift, but these are actually the most difficult to make stick. You have to have a real management buy-in to the project: if you do, then you really can see some significant changes.”

New technology

In some cases, the upgrade to energy efficiency is easy to justify: the churn in computer technology means there’s little to hang on to with older models so there’s plenty of opportunity to bring in energy efficiency considerations as things develop: for Bremenports one of the first stages was greening the IT-services by efficient power supply units and a further element was replacing a number of stationary computers with thin clients which provide the same performance but require just a fifth of the energy.

However, in many cases the ‘repair or replace’ equation needs more thought: a lot of ports assume that because they are making the most out of old equipment, they are actually saving money. Not so, as often the cost of the investment is a fraction of the energy bill, which can be chopped massively by using new kit – if you get the timing right.

Take lighting, for example. Not only is LED lighting is a lot more efficient than metal halide, but the output elements last for years and it also ‘warms up’ quicker – a few seconds rather than minutes. This means that workers don’t actually need to switch on the lighting before they need to, and will be happier switching them off again.

But Mr Gaffney explains that you do need to keep an eye on tech developments: “Originally the arguments for LEDs didn’t stack up, but it wasn’t long before the balance swung in its favour; there’s a lot of technology out there that might not be worthwhile now, but this might change in just a couple of years time.”

Despite this, the first bit of kit to use might just be a pair of good reading glasses, as settling down to pick apart the energy bill – while tedious – may well prove worthwhile.

“I have never seen two terminals on the same rates… and a surprising number really don’t know how they are being charged,” says Mr Gaffney. He explains there are usually a couple of components to the bill and these can vary depending on the issues that the utility company faces: if it has an issue with capacity at certain hours, then there may be higher rates for peak times. If it has a problem with infrastructure, its demand or ‘peak usage charge’ portion is often given more weight.

Peak costs

In certain places a demand charge is set by a peak consumption measurement taking place at regular intervals, so what goes on during these periods can have a large impact on the bill. He has seen cases where the demand cost was greater than the energy consumption cost. “Find out when it’s happening, make some schedule changes so you don’t test your reefers during this time,” he explains.

An oversight can be costly. Mr Gaffney tells of a port that had its peak demand set on one particular weekend when no cargo was being worked. Unfortunately the air-conditioning and lighting – a significant load – was turned on Friday night and not turned off during the day. “As this set the level of the demand charge, it increased the monthly bill for the next 11 months,” he explains.

Again, it’s important to have something to show for the effort: “Sometimes a port can be involved in reducing its overall energy consumption without actually saving money,” he says. A proper bill breakdown is “not simply dividing the cost by the number of kilowatt hours used” he points out, adding this gives a port the basis for talking with utility companies, especially as they too have issues and usually want to mitigate against a huge demand draw at an inconvenient time.