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It's economic downturn but downturn or not, reducing cost should be viewed as an opportunity. Since electricity cost is an item in our P&L, reducing it will increase profits. In facilities, commercial or industrial, the role is always on the shoulder of the facility manager to reduce utility cost. In fact the facility manager should spare time to analyse cost, utility bills, maintenance bills and the way the business is conducted.

When a mechanical engineer configures a motor for the plant, normally the purchasing is left to the purchasing officer. A supplier will be able to influence the purchaser to buy equipments that are above specification but at lower the cost. Lower cost but bigger power is the supplier"s selling point. A bigger power motor will consume more electricity.

Apathy, mediocrity and wrong priorities are some of the reasons for non sensitivity to high electric bills. The other is, being ignorance on the part of the engineer on technologies to reduce electric bills. The search for technologies must be continuous. Readings, seminars, convention, trainings and presentation by technology hawkers such as the salesman are a good source of technological information. Especially the salesmen, they promote technologies but many a time, they are forbidden to approach the premises. "Salesmen are not allowed" notice can be found at entrance of buildings. How could we get information when the peddler of free information are blocked at our door steps.

Just because there is no query on high electricity cost does not mean everything is perfectly alright. If every dollar counts, every initiative must be rewarded.

Electrical engineers are satisfied with capacitor banks that are installed at the incoming line of the facility. Just because the utility company insist on certain power factor we rushed into installing power factor correcting device, the capacitor banks. The improvement to the power factor benefit only the utility company but not our facility. The load are not affected. If the motor is inefficient, the power factor at the load will be low. Hence the wastages.

Improving effiiency of our electrical loads must be top priority. An article in "Times .com" will make us excited forever. "This may sound too good to be true, but we have a renewable-energy resource that is perfectly clean, remarkably cheap, surprisingly abundant and immediately available. It has astounding potential to reduce the carbon emissions that threaten our planet, the dependence on foreign oil that threatens our security and the energy costs that threaten our wallets. Unlike coal and petroleum, it doesn't pollute; unlike solar and wind, it doesn't depend on the weather; unlike ethanol, it doesn't accelerate deforestation or inflate food prices; unlike nuclear plants, it doesn't raise uncomfortable questions about meltdowns or terrorist attacks or radioactive-waste storage, and it doesn't take a decade to build. It isn't what-if like hydrogen, clean coal and tidal power; it's already proven to be workable, scalable and cost-effective. And we don't need to import it. "

This miracle juice goes by the distinctly boring name of energy efficiency, and it's often ignored in the hubbub over alternative fuels, the nuclear renaissance, T. Boone Pickens and the green-tech economy. Clearly, it needs an agent. But it's a simple concept: wasting less energy. Or more precisely, consuming less energy to get the same amount of heat for your shower, light for your office and power for your factory. It turns out to be much less expensive, destructive and time-intensive to reduce demand through efficiency than to increase supply through new drilling or new power plants. A nationwide push to save "negawatts" instead of building more megawatts could help reverse our unsustainable increases in energy-hogging and carbon-spewing while creating a slew of jobs and saving a load of cash.

Now this may sound like Jimmy Carter's 30-year-old plea for us to turn down the heat and put on sweaters or like an eco-lecture nagging us to turn off lights, drive less and otherwise change our behavior to save energy. It would be nice if we did, but that's conservation, not efficiency. We don't have to sacrifice comfort or change routines to get efficient. Doing less with less may be admirable, but efficiency is about doing the same or more with less. And studies by groups as diverse as the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and even the National Petroleum Council have identified efficiency as the way to start addressing our energy and climate crises. In fact, we've already started; the Alliance to Save Energy calculates that without the efficiency gains we've made since the last energy crisis, in 1973, our economy would use nearly 50% more energy today. That's more than we get from oil, twice what we get from coal or natural gas and six times what we get from nuclear plants.

But we could save much more. A McKinsey study found that a global effort to boost efficiency with existing technologies could have "spectacular results," eliminating more than 20% of world energy demand by 2020. Efficiency guru Amory Lovins argues that today's best techniques could save the U.S. half our oil and gas and three-fourths of our electricity. That would mean no more imports from the Middle East, lower utility bills for everyone and a big step off our path toward a hotter planet. Honeywell CEO Dave Cote brags that widespread adoption of just his own company's efficiency products could slash U.S. energy use 20%. "There's a huge amount of low-hanging fruit," he says.

There are two basic ways to save energy without deprivation or daily effort. We can use more efficient machinery, like fuel-efficient cars that guzzle less gas, or those pigtailed compact fluorescent lightbulbs that use 75% less power than traditional bulbs, or state-of-the-art refrigerators that are three times as efficient as 1973 models. We can also use machinery more productively. That can be as simple as insulating pipes and ducts, caulking doors and windows and otherwise weatherizing our homes to avoid heating our attics and the outdoors. Or installing motion sensors and programmable thermostats that turn out lights and air conditioners when no one's in the room. President-elect Barack Obama noted on the campaign trail that if we all just properly inflated our tires and maintained our engines, we could save as much oil now as new offshore drilling would produce by 2030. And since buildings devour two-thirds of our power, commercial and industrial operations can weed out even more waste through green construction and automated systems that practically import power as needed. "We've hit rock bottom in our addiction to fossil fuels," says Ian Bowles, Massachusetts energy and environmental affairs secretary. "We need an intervention, and energy efficiency is it."

Energy saving not only reduce cost but a million KWh saved will reduce 1.5 m pounds of carbon dioxide, 525 barrels of oil, 400 tons of coal, 10,700 pounds of sulfur dioxide and an equivalent to reducing carbon dioxide from 116 cars per year.

It's well documented that an energy project:-

1. Demonstrates and captures value of reduced emissions from energy effeciency
2. Enhances property values
3. Increases productivity and potential labour cost savings
4. Enhance image as a responsible corporate citizen
5. Enhance image as a well managed corporation.

For a start, get an energy study done. Identify the inefficient loads and reduce line losses, copper losses, and find equipments or technologies that can compensate for the reactive current. Don't install over specified motors even if it cost cheaper and monitor cost by the day. Dont wait for a free energy study. Nothing is free.