The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) has embarked on a major expansion of its industrial energy efficiency effort through a new program called Energy Smart Industrial (ESI) – and they have significant funding available to help Northwest food processors achieve energy efficiency savings and reduce their energy bills.

Through services that include free in-plant energy assessments and direct reimbursement incentives to buy down the cost of installing energy efficiency measures or performing energy efficiency O&M activities, BPA is offering to pay up to 70 percent of project incremental cost for new and retrofit energy efficiency measures with at least a 10-year life. BPA has set an aggressive goal to nearly double the average megawatts of savings captured in the previous two years, for a total savings of 27aMW.

ESI’s services and incentives are available through participating public utilities in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming, many in rural areas; to date, 99 utilities, including 21 in Idaho, 26 in Oregon and 44 in Washington, have signed up for the service. For a full list of participating utilities, please visit the following link: http://www.bpa.gov/energy/n/industrial/pdf/2010-07-14_ESI_utility-ESIP_contact_matrix.pdf.

Food processing is a target industry of the ESI program.  BPA states that the goal of the program is to save energy and increase profitability with no degradation to current industrial processes. The program’s services, delivered by specialists who understand the food processing industry’s privacy, security and proprietary process concerns, are designed to increase profits regardless of current energy budgets and production processes. According to BPA ESI Program Lead Jennifer Eskil, “Program staff will work with you to scope the project and provide a detailed plan that includes minimal production impact and maximum ROI. Plans can be turnkey with minimal resource impact for you.”

Eskil notes that the ESI program is also able to provide co-funding for an in-plant Energy Project Manager at food processing facilities. For qualifying plants (1 million kWh in energy savings annually), BPA will fund an existing or new-hire staff person to oversee energy efficiency projects, monitoring and evaluation.  NWFPA is working with BPA to investigate a program where smaller facilities could aggregate savings to meet the threshold and share an Energy Project Manager.

For more information on BPA’s Energy Smart Utility program, please contact your local electric utility.