OK, so let’s start off by saying I’m not an expert on energy audits, I’m just an informed observer (plus investment banker) who works mostly in the hydrocarbon energy space (financing those who find oil and gas) and who works as well with renewable power producers. That does involve the economics of each… not the fluffy feel good made up “wish it were economic” stuff, but things like loonies and twoonies real economics. I’m also a guy who has renovated houses and made consumer level cost/benefit analysis choices.
This weekend Cindy and I stayed at CRMR’s Emerald Lake Lodge. Lovely place, lovely experience. We did such environmentally friendly things as XC ski, snowshoe, and maybe more consumption focused activities like eating Caribou, Elk, and fish flown in from who knows where… anyway, got me thinking, and perhaps there’s room for improvement?
I took note of their power consumption and generation to a greater extent than most lodge stays. They experience frequent power outages, albeit for brief periods of time. When we checked in for Saturday dinner we made small talk with the maître d’ whom also does other roles around the place. He’s a Field BC resident, and said the GM lives in Field too, both long term employees. He mentioned they do struggle with the Diesel generators, and that they’ve had to replace them semi frequently over the last few years at a cost of like $40k. Also mentioned during cold snaps how super strained they become when people start trying to add heat to the rustic rooms with plug in space heaters.
I’m well aware that on grid, a lot of conservation technologies, whether it be reducing consumption or differing methods of generation, face tougher competitive economics – generating electrons is relatively cheap at least before politics and “wish it were economic” influences. Small scale generation with Diesel has a different set of economics (it’s expensive – generally speaking, generators are best run for short periods at max load). This got me thinking even more, and I recalled back to a trip through Argentina and Chile at the end of 2006, where even remote Argentine lodges had then-state-of-the-art compact flourescent bulbs and grassroots innovative ways to generate electricity (one that had a pretty rudimentary run of river system stood out). And that’s in a country/area with less societal wealth/technology availability than when you’re 2h away from Calgary and/or 15 mins off the TransCanada and the train line so anything can be brought in.
He also mentioned the National Parks are restrictive on allowing changes. I guess that’s their duty. Having said that, if there’s a Parks Canada employee whose job it is to turn down perhaps economic, innovative projects in favour of keeping the Diesel generators going, I think a head check could be in order. Silence is supposed to permeate the air, not generators (albeit down by the staff accommodation). Generally speaking, marginal power prices from Diesel generation cost runs over $120/MWh, with lifecycle cost including the generator, tanks, noise insulation, etc. usually well over $200/MWh. Needless to say, this his high relative to grid – which just emphasizes that in generation setting such as this, reduction of use becomes a greater focus.
Their web site says 24 cabin style buildings accommodating 200 guests in total. More importantly I think I read 85 various rooms between the lodges and cabins. There’s also common areas, hallways, checkin area, that gym area, and then what seemed like quite a sizeable spread of guest housing by the parking lot (where the generators were housed in reasonably camouflage but brand new wood fascia buildings designed to blend in).
So let’s say 85 rooms plus areas, plus another 15 rooms/areas (probably all bunks) for staff – round numbers is good. 100 rooms.
If our room was indicative of all, we had 4 lamps, 6 halogens, 2 other lights, plus bathroom lighting of 3 halogens. That’s 15 lights. We also had a stairs/hallway up with a couple, for a total of 17. They were all incandescent, burned out at a high rate I’m guessing (I observed two in our room that burned out in our two day stay, likely with the power cycling up and down/failing 4x we noticed during the stay).
They weren’t low Watts. Let’s say the bulbs were 75W and the halogens were 50W, and they were half half. An average of 62.5W * 17 is 1,062.5W per room. But intermittent and low utilization right? Yes, probably. But the architecture and rooms are rustic old school. When you’re in you turn on most of them we were finding. So say 1kW potential lighting only drain per room times 100 rooms = 100kW. Now that’s a number that can drive some small scale economics.
Wal-mart posted an analysis, and is implementing, switching to LED bulbs, even at a relatively high price point per bulb (a hugely different concept than “cost”). In their view, the power savings helps drives the economics, but further, so does the lack of bulb replacement. Without rigorous economic analysis, I’d argue that a Diesel generated resort vs on grid Wal-mart would have even enhanced electricity cost economic benefit. Also with Australian import workers changing bulbs at a higher frequency than Wal-mart employees changing fluorescent bulbs as the base case (based on the frequency of them failing in our room anyway, plus incandescent vs. CFL technology), the directional argument would go the same way. I bet Wal-mart’s analysis is pretty sound. And two directional points as above would lead me to the conclusion that it’s probably also economic to switch to LED bulbs (in the next year or two) for this resort.
Let’s say, conservatively, that each halogen and incandescent bulb is replaced (they make ones that fit each socket type) can produce equivalent lighting to the mixture noted above, for 10W a bulb on average. Peak room consumption would drop to 170W, peak resort (lighting) consumption would drop to 17kW from 100kW. Note that’s a big step change. The up front cash cost of this at $15/bulb bulk purchase would be on the order of $25,000 – note however this is less than the Diesel generator that was quoted as just being purchased, and which apparently powers out frequently. Any probability assigned to lessening the frequency of purchasing $40k generators would seem to be compelling. This also frees up capacity and likely alleviates the brown-outs from strained Diesel generation for washing, cooking, some space heating appeared to be electrical, computer networks, etc. all which are present. Caveat here is that $25,000 might be dropping $5,000/year for next couple of years. Guess it depends on how many generator replacements and brownouts one can tolerate.
So perhaps at the very least it a) keeps that generator running comfortably for years at lower fuel load, b) reduces the time people spend changing bulbs and the cost of it, and c) can improve uptime for lighting (not to mention computers, POS systems, etc.).
Island Lake Lodge has a micro run of river hydro system, which I understand may be harder to do in park land, but in reality they are quite non-intrusive. There’s significant head to work with, and with all the walking bridges over the river that runs out of the lake, I’d half bet you could conceal most of a generator under an interpretive bridge. If it is only able to be “half” concealed, I’d bet a small national park style plaque explaining what it is would just interest people more rather than it being labelled an eyesore. Not sure on year round flow rates, but it was cool this weekend and there was running water everywhere (both into and out of lake). Has some higher capital costs, but the useful life is long, the ongoing cost is low (free fuel as long as gravity and wetness are on earth), and is quiet. Depends on amortization period I guess, but seems to me the park, and the lodge, are going to be there in a hundred years (ie. half the intrigue of the place currently is entirely the fact that it’s old now).
A total side note would be to consider natural gas or propane Diesel engine bi-fuel modification (Enerflex among others do this). I presume they have fuel storage on site for space heating, not sure of natural gas (perhaps eliminates some capital up front). But the conversion kits show high payouts on continuously running Diesel engines, especially at current natural gas prices. Keeps same generators, reduces input costs. Economic for drilling rigs, for frac pumpers, etc.
Aside from all this half assed guesstimating, I’d think a real energy audit could yield the same results/directional push on economics alone. Plus, a national parks situated, semi remote lodge, may generate an intangible benefit of impressing its customers with such visibly progressive displays of striving for economics in tandem with “greenery”. If remote Argentine lodges could do it 6 years ago, why can’t we now?
And for my wingnut idea of the day, why does a large Diesel bus have to transport you 1km from guest parking to the lodge? That’s capital the lodge has to tie up… and it’s a large Diesel bus. Alternatives:
a) Tell the Aussie kids they get a lot of exercise here as the customers drive to the lodge (where there’s guest parking right out front for day use people only), and they valet them down to overnight, and *gasp* walk back up. 15 trips a day between 3 guys on concierge = 5 trips at 10 min each, equals one hour of walking per day.
b) Get someone to tinker with an electric tracked mega golf cart thingy. Like those old snow cat style boxes on wheels. What are electric’s disadvantages? Range and high speed. What if the thing’s whole purpose in life is 1km trips with no particular speed requirement?
c) Rustic – customers walk, gear is dog sledded. Or donkey pulled.
Seriously, a bus just seems like overcapitalization… it’s a semi-remote lodge, the attraction is being outside!
Random side note is that the availability of water or conservation of water is apparently not an issue there, perhaps Field septic can be used. Toilets are the old school high water volume kind, where as other self-sufficient lodges I’ve been to use more modern approaches.
Some of this is worthless pontification, but I believe there’s some merit. I’m not going to be back there soon, and I’m not collecting the lodge revenues or writing their investment cheques, so I have little say in it other than this hot air with a couple non-intensive research numbers.
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