Can resiliency mean energy independence and savings for your business?

What is energy resiliency and what are the benefits? How does a business achieve resiliency? We explain.

A customer of ours recently said, “The power to our entire facility depends on a wire hanging on a dead tree, the wind or a termite can knock that out... And that is unacceptable!”

It’s true: A single fallen tree during a storm has taken out an entire region's power. Abnormally high summer heat strains the grid, triggering soaring electricity costs and rolling blackouts.

To make things worse, the centralized power grid is increasingly being asked to do things it was not designed to, making it more unreliable and more costly than ever.

Weather events like heat waves, flooding, and hurricanes are increasingly threatening our electricity grid. Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) events, or utility-initiated blackouts, are also becoming common across California and other regions prone to extreme weather and natural disasters. With climate change continuing to impact the grid, it is integral that your business develops “energy resiliency” to protect your operations from interrupted power supply. Without sufficient energy resiliency, your business can be vulnerable to high costs, loss of product, rising electricity rates, and safety risks associated with grid power outages.

Introducing the “Prosumer”

The good news is, the more energy independent energy consumers are, the stronger the grid becomes. How is this possible? As businesses leverage the many incentives to invest in their very own onsite power generation and storage systems, and become more resilient and self-sufficient, these same resources can be called upon to support the grid. This has created a new category of consumers known as Prosumers because they both produce and consume energy.

But what is energy resiliency, and how do businesses benefit from it?

Energy resiliency is the ability to continuously supply energy to your business during a grid outage, without disrupting critical operations. This typically entails some type of onsite energy generation source such as solar, combined heat and power, or natural gas clean energy standby power generators. They can also be paired with a battery energy storage system for added backup power capacity and flexibility. The primary benefits of resiliency can be grouped into two pillars: energy independence (peace of mind) and financial savings.

Resiliency increases energy independence

Complete energy independence means that your business’s energy consumption and energy costs are not dependent on the grid, so they are not negatively affected during peak energy prices or grid outages. However, complete energy independence is not always required. Instead, many businesses aim to gain enough energy independence to back up essential loads that support critical business operations. Essential loads vary for different businesses, but can include specific manufacturing equipment, clean rooms, cold storage, critical patient care facilities, and other areas that require continuous electricity to sustain operation. Backup solutions can provide temporary or continuous power during grid outages, enabling businesses to continue to run operations without disruption.

Resiliency boosts long-term savings

In addition to providing the peace of mind of reliable electricity, energy resiliency can provide businesses significant financial savings in a number of ways. First, when critical systems are able to continue power-supported operation during grid interruptions, the high costs associated with process disruptions are avoided. Continuous power can also prevent the loss of perishable products or other inventory that would otherwise spoil or lose value. Employee health and safety risks can be minimized as well.

Even during normal grid operations, businesses can leverage their onsite systems to hedge against rising electricity prices and reduce utility bills. For example, a business can store its produced solar power in an onsite battery energy storage system and consume the stored energy when utility prices are the highest, thus avoiding expensive utility rates. Businesses can also dispatch this stored energy when its demand is the highest, thus shaving the “peaks” of its demand to reduce the demand charge portion of its utility bill. 

Promise Energy: your resiliency partner

The Promise Energy team is here to help you on your journey towards energy resiliency. We have decades of experience working with property owners and facility managers across the U.S. to identify and install custom energy solutions. We specialize in finding holistic energy management solutions for complex energy systems. This means that we don’t just assess sites for solar and other renewable technologies; we also investigate efficiency, operational, and cost reduction opportunities across lightning, ventilation, controls, and other elements of the building envelope and central plant. Leveraging this unique process and our integrated expertise, we can uncover hidden synergies between maximizing resiliency, energy cost savings, and other facility upgrades. 

Through our high level of energy expertise and products, you can achieve a level of energy resilience that keeps you connected, productive, and safe.

Interested in becoming energy resilient? Contact the Promise Energy team. We look forward to keeping you connected and safe, always!

At Promise Energy, we don’t believe that one size fits all. We pride ourselves in designing and installing customized energy solutions that provide the greatest long-term value and energy control for our customers.