New technologies, markets, and accessibility are allowing customers to take control of their energy usage. E3 helps large-scale users manage costs and meet sustainability goals. We have worked with businesses, universities, transportation agencies, and ports, analyzing their energy consumption, identifying strategies to lower their utility bills, and assessing onsite and wholesale electricity market alternatives to utility service. We assist clients with procuring and contracting for conventional and renewable resources. For organizations pursuing sustainability goals, we evaluate the economics of electrification, energy conservation, and emissions reductions.
Our services for large energy users include:
- Electricity procurement strategy
- Power procurement auctions
- Negotiation support for power purchase agreements
- Custom market price projections
- Renewable energy credit valuation
- Sustainability goals and reporting criteria
- Negotiating retail electric rate discounts
- Regulatory strategy and support
Large energy user services projects
Using a microgrid for renewables integration | U.C. San Diego, 2011–13
E3 worked closely with the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), to develop innovative business cases for utilizing UCSD’s microgrid to provide system-level renewables integration services and integrate UCSD’s onsite solar resources. The UCSD microgrid consists of a 30 MW combined heat and power system that includes natural gas generators, steam-driven chillers, and thermal storage. E3 benchmarked the UCSD microgrid and developed an optimal dispatch model that determines hourly dispatch scenarios for on-campus resources and cost-effective strategies to provide peak load shifting, grid support, and PV firming. Using the model’s results, E3 proposed new tariff designs and incentives that could motivate UCSD and similar customers to use their distributed resources to integrate variable renewable energy.
Publications
Electricity cost reduction and sustainability support | Los Angeles MTA, 2015–present
We are helping the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), one of the largest public transit systems in the country, to reduce its electricity costs, and define and achieve its environmental goals. E3’s scope has encompassed guidance on MTA’s energy strategic plan and quantification of sustainability objectives. E3’s effort has included analyzing data for hundreds of monthly electric bills, assessing potential electricity cost savings, and investigating regulatory strategies to realize cost-reducing alternatives.
Renewable procurement strategy for corporate sustainability | Large data center, 2016
E3 advised a global data center operator on renewable energy procurement in the western U.S. to support achievement of its corporate sustainability goals. We advised the client about factors impacting the long-run cost of the renewable attribute for wind and solar procurement, which is critical to understanding the economics of long-term renewable power purchase agreements. Our 20-year hourly price projections under various market and regulatory scenarios factored in natural gas and carbon price levels, the mix and quantity of renewable technologies on the system, the penetration of rooftop solar PV, and the deployment of renewable integration technologies and strategies. These scenarios supported transaction due diligence and provided a boundary for the ranges of potential renewable energy credit costs.
Energy procurement plan | University of California, 2012–present
The University of California Office of the President (UCOP) retained E3 to develop an energy procurement plan for the six UC campuses served by competitive energy suppliers with total annual usage of over 250 GWh. We developed a model to compare the economic and environmental attributes of proposed purchase contracts against the university’s existing portfolio of contracts and retail electric rates. E3 projected each campus’s loads, operation profiles, and costs for existing combined heat and power facilities, and calculated the cost of new supply portfolios that included on-site generation, off-campus renewable power purchase agreements, and market electricity purchases. Our analysis, which found significant potential to make progress on sustainability goals while managing procurement costs and risk, formed the basis for UCOP’s procurement strategy. E3 continues to advise UCOP and individual campuses on the economics of renewable energy projects and procurement strategies for achieving the UC Sustainability Directive of zero carbon emissions by 2025.
Electric rate discounts to support electrification | Port of Long Beach, 2007-2015
E3, as electric rate consultant to the Port of Long Beach, the nation’s second-busiest port, led negotiations with Southern California Edison (SCE) to achieve electric rate discounts in recognition of the Port’s electrification program and resulting reductions in emissions of GHGs and criteria pollutants. Negotiations led to the California Public Utilities Commission’s March 2014 approval of SCE’s Rate Schedule ME, which provides electric rate discounts and a program under which SCE installs major electric infrastructure at no cost to the port or its tenants. These measures support critical electrification and environmental improvement projects at the Port, which is expected to quintuple its electric usage by 2030. The projects will improve air quality in the region, and rate discounts are expected to yield more than $300 million in savings over the term of the agreement.
