Beware the Summer Saver
Do you remember the Enron years and experimentation with deregulated utilities, buying electricity over state lines that resulted in county wide brown outs ten years ago. I remember whole sections of communities losing power in the middle of the day. I remember traffic lights not working in the middle of the day. We had lots of service calls over air conditioners not working due to blown fuses those couple of years.
Fast forward to the 21st century and SDGE has a little program called the Summer Saver. The Summer Saver is designed to control energy usage during the summer during hot days. If you sign up for the saver, then SDGE comes out and installs a little box on the side of your air conditioner which will cut voltage to your air conditioner when they deem energy usage has hit its peak, so as not to have brown outs etc. They offer and undisclosed credit to your bill at the end of the year.
Be wary of this for a couple of reasons. First of all, if you have any processes that are critical to keep under a certain temperature like your server or some experiment that you may be doing, then I would refrain from this offer. Secondly, if your business is critical to keeping customers in the store or the conference room or wherever, you do not have any control as to when SDGE turns your air off. You may save a few bucks on your utility bill but you could lose a bunch more by customers remembering how warm your store is.
We’ve already had a customer call in and place a service call for their air not working. Our technician went out and found that the unit was off due to SDGE and the customer had to pay our service fee. If you’re a tenant in a multi-tenant building, then you may want to inquire of your landlord whether the units are on the summer saver before you call for service. The last thing you want to do is to be hot and bothered by spending money you didn’t need to.
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The Simplest of Rebates
SDGE manages its rebates on package and split air conditioning units for commercial businesses through a program called the Premium Efficiency Cooling Program. This program is administered by a third party called Conservation Services Group (CSG). Systems Operation Services has joined forces with CSG to provide rebates to commercial customers.
This is a simple process that we at S.O.S. can take care of for you. For instance, you’ve spent a lot on repairs to the office air conditioner over the last couple of years. You remember how uncomfortable everyone in the office was last August and September. What should you do? If the unit is old enough, then you qualify for a rebate by replacing the unit with a new hi-efficiency unit. Your comfort level goes up. Your worry goes down, Your utility bill goes down and your savings go up! I call that a win win win win!
How is the rebate calculated? It is a simple $100 per ton of air conditioning. If you have a five ton unit on the roof, then you get a $500 check from SDGE. How cool is that, literally and figuratively. I once had a customer ask, “If it was safe to put five tons on the roof.” I’m not talking five tons of weight, but five tons of cooling. Air conditioners are rated in tons and one ton equals 12,000 BTU’s per hour of cooling. You don’t need to worry about the roof caving in.
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