Apr 5, 2018 3 min read

Washington City Council received a good report on energy savings Monday.

Richard Phelps, general manager of the international company ABM Building Solutions, reported to the city Monday their 15-year contract has saved the city $15,000 in excess of ABM’s guaranteed savings of $50,000 per year on energy bills. And it’s only year five.

“We’ve been able to save a lot of money through this program,” Councilman Joseph Manning said.

The contract cost $415,000, which the city financed through a third party and paid for with the energy savings. The contract started in 2011, when ABM took a look at the city’s bills and energy use at several facilities, including City Hall, the main fire station and the public works buildings. They then made plans for several energy improvements, including heating and air systems, indoor lighting and windows.

One of those improvements included a new boiler system at the fire station.

“It was old, it was inefficient,” Phelps said. They would eventually need to replace it. This is getting ahead of things before it fails, and then you’re not paying for repairs on the old boiler.”

Each year of the contract so far, the city has saved more than ABM’s $50,000 guarantee on its operational costs. Because the city continued to budget for what the energy bills had been previously, it was able to use the savings to pay for the improvements, such as the new boiler system.

“That may ultimately have been the selling point, because given the age of the buildings and the infrastructure, we knew we would need to make those improvements,” Manning said.

Lynn Galluze, city computer systems coordinated, added, “If we don’t save what they guaranteed, they would have to write a check for the difference.”

Phelps’ report covered the past audit year, from October 2016 to September 2017. During that period, the city reduced its electric use by 43 percent and its gas use by nearly 12 percent.

Galluze and Manning both said that when ABM first presented the contract to the city, there was a small level of skepticism.

“It appeared too good to be true,” Manning said. “As we looked at it, everybody agreed to give it a shot. It worked out very well. Every year we’ve seen improvements in it, and we’ve just been extremely happy with it.”

Manning said the city has saved “a couple thousand” a month by recently switching energy providers.

The city also recently entered a partnership with First Energy to change the city’s street lights from Cobra Head lights to LED lighting – a similar program, Manning said, that will pay for itself over time in energy savings.