By Liz Stevens
The US Department of Energy’s Better Plants Program helps US manufacturers set and achieve ambitious energy reduction goals. By joining Better Plants, partners like HARBEC, Inc. can tap information, tools and resources to improve their plants’ energy efficiency.
HARBEC, Ontario, New York, is a manufacturer of tight tolerance precision 3D printed metals and plastics, machined components and assemblies, and injection molded components and assemblies. The company operates in a climate-controlled, sustainable carbon neutral facility, serving a variety of markets. On a sustainability quest for over 20 years, HARBEC is a Top 5er thanks to these big accomplishments.
A Combined Heat & Power System
In his presentation at a DOE’s Better Buildings Summit, HARBEC’s founder and president Bob Bechtold described how the company had approached CHP (combined heat and power) opportunities and benefits.
After power quality issues caused damage to HARBEC’s manufacturing equipment, the company wanted to address the power problem, improve conditions for employees and reduce ambient moisture for better part quality. HARBEC ramped up a CHP system with the help of a New York State incentive, installing 25 CNG-fueled 30kW microturbine generators to power the plant. And using the thermal energy from the system’s exhaust, HARBEC powered heat and air conditioning for its molding area and other spaces.
Superior Finance Methodology and Strategies
The DOE Better Building Program spotlighted HARBEC for the finance method it adopted to improve evaluations of energy-savings projects. The company had faced difficulties in financing projects with long payback periods but, by adopting a new finance method, HARBEC was able to fund and implement projects that returned long-term energy savings and improved price certainty for predicting energy costs.
Rather than adhering to traditional ROI payback rules, the company began to evaluate potential projects on the basis of financial impacts over the entire course of the projects’ expected lives.
With HARBEC’s project finance method, if the energy savings over the expected life of an energy efficiency or renewable energy project outweigh the project’s implementation costs, then the project is considered economically justifiable and is likely to be approved. This model backed HARBEC’s wind turbines and its CHP system, to name just two of the many initiatives launched using the model.
A Water Retention Pond
In its quest to become water neutral, HARBEC implemented water efficiency measures and built a water retention pond, eliminating its use of municipally supplied water for all but drinking and hand washing.
By capturing and storing rainwater, HARBEC has a water source for operations and for a fire suppression sprinkler system. The company also installed heat exchangers at the bottom of the pond, and pipes and cools process water through this geothermal heat sink, reducing the load on its cooling towers.
When HARBEC put in the retention pond, it logged 34% water savings per year. An added benefit is that by using the pond to do part of the process water cooling, the company has reduced the buildup of heavy metals in its cooling towers.
Meeting the Better Plants Challenge
DOE has challenged US manufacturers to take the Better Buildings Challenge. Hundreds of manufacturers and other companies have pledged to reduce energy use throughout their portfolios by at least 20% over 10 years. These partners share their annual progress and their solutions, providing replicable models for others to follow.
As part of the Challenge, HARBEC’s energy efficiency and resource utilization advances have included:
- meeting its initial goal by improving energy intensity by 25% cumulatively over just four years,
- deployment of on-site renewable and alternative energy technologies – including wind turbines and a CHP system – to achieve fixed energy costs and increased energy utilization,
- using proactive energy measurement and management systems, including the adoption of ISO 50001 and participation in DOE’s Superior Energy Performance Program,
- creating proactive equipment procurement and financing guidelines,
- targeting energy efficiency projects for high-performance results, including high efficiency lighting and daylight gathering, building envelope, HVAC and thermal energy efficiency improvements,
- upping operations energy efficiency, such as by insulating injection molding machine barrels,
- making capital equipment purchases of higher efficiency electric injection molding machines.
ISO 50001 Ready
Per ISO.org, ISO 50001 is based on the management system model of continual improvement also used for other well-known standards such as ISO 9001 or ISO 14001. ISO 50001 provides a framework of requirements for organizations to develop a policy for more efficient use of energy, fix targets and objectives to meet the policy, use data to better understand and make decisions about energy use, measure the results, review how well the policy works and continually improve energy management.
HARBEC first earned certification to the ISO 50001 energy management system (EnMS) standard as part of DOE’s Superior Energy Performance 50001™ (SEP 50001) process in 2013 and has made steady improvements to its energy and carbon performance ever since. HARBEC recertified to ISO 50001 in December 2019 and achieved DOE recognition for SEP 50001 at the Platinum level for the third time.
HARBEC’s energy performance improvement stats were 16.5% in 2013, 25.7% in 2016 and 17.6% in 2019. This success was achieved by making a company-wide commitment to energy management, leveraging local and state technical assistance programs, making use of DOE’s CHP Deployment program, using a system to track and quantify its energy efficiency, engaging and training all employees, pinpointing cost-free improvements and continually raising the bar to find new energy efficiency angles. As a result, HARBEC enjoys a proven green reputation, has verified and sustained energy savings, has a documented system for energy managers to use, can count on its resilience to operate under tough conditions and sees thousands of saved dollars annually in its bottom line.
For more details about HARBEC and the Better Plants program, visit https://betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/partners/harbec.
For more information on the Better Plants program, visit https://betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/better-plants,
or get the QuickStart Guide for Small to Medium Manufacturers at
https://betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/QuickStart%20Guide%20-%20October%202020_5.pdf.
