Council awarded for energy efficiency efforts
Xcel Energy has recognized Metropolitan Council Environmental Services (MCES) with its Efficiency Partner Award for the second consecutive year. Xcel awards customers and trade partners who make substantial energy-efficiency efforts.
A worker assembles energy efficient lighting in the tunnels beneath the Metro Plant.
MCES has an eight-member Energy Team spearheading a division-wide, multi-year effort to reduce fossil-fuel energy use in the wastewater collection and treatment system. Working with Xcel, between January 2007 and December 2009 MCES completed 27 energy reduction projects with an estimated annual savings of 31 million kilowatt hours and two million dollars.
"In the current quarter of 2010, compared with the same quarter the 2006 baseline year, we are achieving an approximately 20% energy reduction,” said Brad Gehring, MCES energy specialist.
The most significant savings came from modifications to the wastewater treatment aeration system at the Metro Plant, including changes to the dissolved oxygen control strategy, diffuser cleaning and control loop tuning, Gehring said. Another large project involved a lighting study (commissioned by Xcel) and bulb replacement in the five miles of tunnels at the plant.
Studies have identified further process efficiencies that could save an additional $1.5 million annually.