DearFriends and Neighbors,
Warren County Board of Supervisors Meeting
August 21, 10 am – Municipal Center
Siemens Cogen Performance Assurance Report
The county owned Siemens cogeneration plant at the nursing home was installed in 2005 with much fanfare and promise of energy savings, but there were those who right from the start questioned the promised savings.
Two were the late Linc Cathers a war hero and engineer, and Doug Auer another local engineer who never backed down from his convictions. Former Treasurer Frank O’Keefe was another who did not see the savings when the actual energy bills were paid.
For the past ten years there has been a steady stream of questions from a number of people including reputable local engineers.
During this time the county received annual “performance assurance reports” from Siemens saying we were saving money. Year in year out the board approved these reports. That is until the nursing home sale.
The reports stopped coming to the board for a vote. By not doing so it is deemed an approval of the energy performance assurance report and the supervisors did not have to go on record of voting yes or no.
Why? You see the county found out the critics had been right all along.
In 2013 the county hired an outside engineering firm to audit the cogen. The cogen was going to be sold with the nursing home. EnerNoc a firm out of Boston was hired. What the EnerNoc engineers documented in their 2014 report was the estimated net loss to the county for electricity and gas over 8 years was -$147,487 when you compare the co-gen to had the county stayed on the grid. In other words the county would have been better off staying on the grid than buying the cogen. The payments for the cogen during this time were more than $3 million. $3 + million to lose $147,487 in energy efficiency.
Once this was documented by EnerNoc the performance assurance reports stopped coming to the board for a vote.
The sale of the nursing home will soon be finalized and the cogen will go with it. But before it goes the county can take one last step to do the right thing.
Supervisor Peter McDevitt and Supervisor Doug Beaty are calling on the county to vote on this year’s annual savings report from Siemens. It is the county’s last chance to do so before the sale. Here is a letter from Siemens stating the report will be “deemed acceptable” if a response is not received by September 18:
http://www.westcottupny.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Siemens-Year-10-Energy-Performance-Contract-cover-page.pdf
Today Supervisor McDevitt and Beaty are doing the right thing calling on the county board to vote on the annual performance assurance report. Otherwise it will be another year of just letting it go and deeming it acceptable.
That would not be the right thing to do.
Mark Westcott