Edison Electric Institute in Las Vegas

Store Equipment & Design, Jan, 2000 by Marc Sandofsky

This past October at the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) Fall '99 National Accounts Workshop in Las Vegas-which, appropriately enough, is the brightest point on Earth-electric utility representatives and their top national accounts gathered together to hear the latest deregulation news, energy, purchasing strategies and energy conservation techniques.

With Y2K rapidly approaching, attendees were relieved to hear Jon Arnold, chief technology officer for EEI, predict that it would have no significant effect on electric power delivery. According to Arnold, the electric utility industry spent over $2.5 billion in the past two years to get ready for Y2K, and industry experts are far more fearful of terrorist acts than of software glitches causing disruptions.

MCDONALD'S INNOVATIONS

One of the highlights of the proceedings was McDonald's receiving EEI's National Accounts Award for Innovation and Technology. Addressing the gathering on McDonald's energy conservation strategies, Tony Spata, corporate engineer for the company, explained that it is actually more like a real estate company than a restaurant chain: Contrary to popular belief, McDonald's makes its money by charging rent to its franchisees rather than by selling them food.

Some 86 percent of its 12,000 U.S. restaurants are franchised; in order to sell an energy conservation idea to its franchisees, McDonald's needs field-verified data to support projected savings. Among the technologies recently adopted by McDonald's, Spata listed high-efficiency air conditioning, two-speed exhaust fans, evaporative cooling, spectrally selective glazing, controllable ballasts, [CO.sub.2] monitors and occupancy sensors.

FIERCE COMPETITION

Joel Gilbert chief executive officer at Gilbert & Associates, Tucker, Gas, and one of the most frequent lecturers on the subject of energy deregulation, reported that competition at the retail level has become so fierce that power providers are taking all the risks away from purchasers.

"Companies are going around to supermarkets and offering to drop off a generator on the ground, finance it, maintain it and guarantee performance," Gilbert said.

while the opportunities for commodity purchase savings are limited by the underlying cost of the energy, substantial opportunities exist for enterprising companies in fuel switching, self-generation and energy conservation.

DRAWING PARALLELS

Jeff Lininger, director of e-commerce at Reliant Energy, Houston, drew a parallel between deregulation and e-commerce, noting that both are market-driven, offer a new way of doing business and have new markets, new products, new customers and new competitors. He predicted that the movement toward deregulation will accelerate the growth of e-commerce.

NEW PRODUCTS

In addition to a bevy of electric utility companies and energy services companies exhibiting their new, value-added services, numerous other vendors had products on display that should be of interest to supermarkets:

* Mitsubishi Electric, Norcross, Ga., was marketing the Lossnay line of energy recovery ventilators. They recapture water vapor as well as heat, and according to Mitsubishi, can cut ventilating loads by as much as 50 percent.

* Melink Corp., Cincinnati, displayed its Intelli-Hood Operator, a controller designed to serve as the brain for kitchen ventilation systems. It automatically varies fan speed to optimize hood performance based on energy efficiency, kitchen comfort, fire safety and occupant health.

* Advanced Refrigeration Technologies, La Quinta, Calif., was promoting its Evaporator Fan Controller for walkin refrigerated boxes. These save energy by cycling off evaporator fans when they aren't needed.

* Pentech Energy Solutions, San Diego, was showing its PERC Energy Recovery Controller for commercial HVAC units. The PERC is a powerful microprocessor that periodically takes the heating or air conditioning compressor off-line, allowing the fan to recover conditioned air from the coils and ducts and move it into interior spaces.

* E-Mon Corp., Langhorne, Pa., one of the leading manufacturers of electronic submetering equipment, had its Profiler on display. This is a utility data recorder that integrates existing utility meters to record consumption and allow users to access information from single or multiple sites to analyze energy use, aggregate demand and negotiate power delivery.