Understanding Your Energy Use

Wednesday, November 17th, 2021

10:00am – 12:00pm AKST
Register Online

Description:  For many water systems, the electric (or energy) bill is one of the largest expenses regularly incurred by the water utility. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the cost of energy as a percent of operating costs for drinking water system can reach as high as 40 percent. It is also one of the most controllable expenses a water utility will have. However, water utility managers oftentimes never see the bill. Understanding your utility’s energy expenses is one of the first steps to controlling and likely reducing your energy expenses. This webinar will walk through understanding your energy bill. Once you understand the energy costs, you can go a step further to understand the energy use within the system. By completing an energy audit, you will be able to see what the energy costs are to run each piece of equipment you use at your utility. This information can then be used to help determine if there are potential operational changes, size changes or other changes that could be made that would save the utility operations money that could be better used elsewhere.

Objectives:

• Discuss the terminology used in on energy bills
• Show you what to look for on your energy bills
• Discuss rate structures that may be available to reduce your energy costs
• Data to collect during an energy audit walk through, interpreting the data

Presenter: Dawn Nall, Research Engineer, Southwest Environmental Finance Center at the University of New Mexico

Cost: Complimentary.

CEUs: This training has been approved for 0.2 core continuing education units by the Alaska DEC Capacity Development and Operator Certification Program.

Who Should Attend: Managers, finance directors, and other staff (and board members) of small water systems serving fewer than 10,000 people. Technical assistance providers and others also welcome.

If you require a certificate: Each viewer must register and attend individually, and participate for the entire duration of the workshop. We cannot provide certificates to individuals watching the webinar as a group.

Partners: