The Less you burn, the more you earn!

Decarbonisation and sustainability go hand in hand. I am a keen reader and love to read a biography of leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Barak Obama and many more. It’s always good to learn from others’ experiences, implement their good qualities, and excel to be a better being. In the same way, I am keenly interested in case studies of energy-efficiency projects done by ESCOs to learn from them and understand market trends. Each case study is unique as it is tailored to client requirements and site demand. Recently I came across one of the case studies of an energy-efficiency project presentation by Mr. Henrique Pereira – CEO of Taka Solutions, a Positive Zero company , at the Construction Technology Festival 2022 on how they reduced energy usage in the built environment. He explains in simple steps how and what they did to achieve energy savings.

Firstly, they had to start by understanding how and where the energy is used. Later, they study to identify the possibilities of reduction through energy efficiency measures that can be implemented. Their solution for this case was the design, implementation and operations of multiple energy efficiency measures financed by a five-year shared savings energy performance contract. Under this kind of financing arrangement, Taka Solutions will implement a project to deliver energy efficiency and will use the stream of income from the cost savings to repay the costs of the project, including capital costs. Essentially Taka does not receive its payment unless the project delivers energy savings as expected. The savings generated are also shared with the client, which translates to a net positive cash flow for the client.

In addition, for the customer, there is no risk attached nor an investment required because Taka absorbs both the technical and financial risks. Taka will provide all of the different facility improvements at no initial cost. Hence, they take care not only of the investment in the actions to be done but also of the operations and ongoing maintenance of all the equipment they bring. The point is that no credit risks were attached to the client because Taka took all of that onto themselves. They implemented the actions that will be required to reduce their energy usage and undergo an operations and maintenance phase where they operate them to achieve the savings that they are expecting, so only by combining these three can they achieve the purpose they set forth.

Henrique also shares a few exciting slides as quick facts about the project. The timeline plays a vital role in energy-saving projects. In this case, they share the contract with the client on a savings energy performance contract, taking all the technical and commercial risks and deploying all the necessary solutions without any initial investment. It’s a five-year contract with an implementation phase at the start, so upon the start of operations, they collect a share of the savings throughout the five years.?But in this case, the audit started in the third quarter of 2020; Taka did all the implementation throughout the first quarters of 2021 and then entered operations in September of 2021, so it’s a pretty lengthy process ahead of it and before they start customer is already collecting the savings because every time Taka does an action the result of that action is already in the benefit of client before the contract begins.

Taka used their proprietary integrated energy platform, Takaunify, to manage how and where the energy is being used, for example, a hot water system, so they replaced the existing diesel boilers with a renewable source to supply hot water shield water network optimisation. Hence, their work is not necessarily replacing existing equipment but optimising existing systems.

They also swapped some of the existing unit chillers for better efficiency; they installed individual nanometers to understand where the energy and how much has been used in each of the central systems. They made water improvements, reducing the water being used and doing some demand control ventilation which was essential to optimise the air side of the cooling.??

One of the main highlights of this case study was that the hotel was heating water for the guests using boilers powered by diesel, which is a very inefficient and carbon-intensive way that Taka replaced with a solar thermal dynamic system. The objective was to increase the renewable percentage and reduce carbon-intensive sources. They implemented a renewable solution to achieve the same objective but using far less energy and replacing a carbon-intensive fuel source with a much more renewable one.?The impact is that in a very short period, they can get a significant portion of savings for a payback. It is essential for ESCO companies because they need technically and economically feasible systems.?

Through the Real-time Asset Performance module of Takaunify, the client can connect specific assets through the IoT Edge gateway to monitor in real-time all the operational data points, view asset-specific energy consumption and optimize the controls on the assets to achieve energy efficiency.

This has been one of the best case studies showcasing the possibilities of removing the diesel-operated boiler to the solar thermal dynamic system and optimizing their existing system to make it more efficient and cost-effective.??