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How to Quantify Energy Savings and Find Foodservice Equipment Rebates
By The Editors
Energy-efficient equipment offers operators the opportunity to lower their overall operating costs. But determining how much money an operator can expect to save is easier said than done.
To help simplify matters, new online calculators are available to help members of the foodservice industry estimate the potential annual savings the use of these technologies could achieve in specific situations. One specific example are the Energy Star foodservice calculators, which cover commercial refrigerators and freezers, gas and electric fryers and steam cookers, cabinets for holding hot foods, and vending machines. All of the calculators provide results for electrical energy savings. However, the calculators for fryers and steam cookers also address gas savings, and the steam cookers calculator provides results for water savings in addition to gas or electric savings.
The new calculators consist of two pages — one for the calculator itself, and one for the assumptions used for the calculation. The fields that need to be filled in are grouped in one colored box that’s set apart from a different colored box that presents the calculation results. This makes the calculators less intimidating and easier to understand than previous calculators that existed for other applications.
With the addition of these new foodservice equipment calculators, there are now 41 Energy Star calculators in all. Some of these may be of interest to specifiers of foodservice equipment even though they are not in the Foodservice Equipment category. For example, the lighting products calculator can show some ways to save energy through lighting retrofits. Replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) not only saves energy, but the bulbs also last much longer and save on maintenance. A restaurant owner that replaces 20 100-watt bulbs with CFLs that use less energy can help the restaurant to save more than $400 per year. CFLs are now available in 2700-kelvin models that produce a warm color tone similar to that of incandescent lamps. You can also replace incandescent exit signs, exterior signs and menu boards with ones lit by light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Because LEDs direct light very effectively, they can draw less than 5 watts to illuminate a sign, whereas an incandescent bulb would use 40 watts to produce the same effect. Although initial costs for LEDs are high, you’ll also save on maintenance costs — the lamps can last five to 10 years.
In addition, to help operators realize other forms of savings, the U.S. Energy Star Program operates the Commercial Foodservice Equipment Rebate Finder — a web-based tool that lets users search for rebates available from energy service providers (ESPs) for Energy Star-qualified commercial foodservice equipment. Users can search by product type or ZIP code. The product types include commercial refrigerators and freezers, fryers, steam cookers, and hot food-holding cabinets. Energy Star will regularly update the tool, which currently lists 48 rebates in 14 states. To make the results more manageable, users can download the data into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet for further sorting or manipulation. There are also live links to web sites for programs at sponsoring ESPs.
As an example of how Rebate Finder works, a search that covered all four equipment categories for a Boston-area ZIP code found one program — sponsored by GasNetworks — offering rebates on a single type of equipment. That program offers a $300 to $500 mail-in rebate on the purchase of an Energy Star-qualified gas fryer. The fryer must be sold and installed within the service territories of the gas companies that are members of GasNetworks: Bay State Gas, Berkshire Gas, KeySpan Energy Delivery (New England), New England Gas (Massachusetts), Northern Utilities (New Hampshire), NSTAR Gas, and Unitil (also Massachusetts).
To qualify for an Energy Star rating, commercial food equipment must meet certain energy efficiency requirements:
Gas fryers must have a minimum cooking efficiency of 50 percent with a maximum idle energy rate of 9,000 Btu/hour, and electric fryers must be 80 percent efficient with a maximum idle energy rate of 1000 watts. These units are up to 25 percent more efficient than standard models. Hot food-holding cabinets must have a maximum idle energy rate of 40 watts per cubic foot, which makes them about 60 percent more efficient than standard models. Energy Star-rated commercial solid-door refrigerators and freezers reduce energy use by as much as 45 percent through such features as ECM (electronically commutated motor) evaporator and condenser fan motors, hot gas anti-sweat heaters, or high-efficiency compressors. Energy Star steam cookers offer a minimum cooking efficiency of 50 percent (electric) or 38 percent (gas) while meeting maximum idle energy rates. They are up to 60 percent more efficient than standard models.
All of these energy-savings calculators can be found at the Energy Star web site: www.energystar.gov/purchasing.
To visit the Rebate Finder and search for available rebates, visit the program web site: www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=CFSrebate.CFSrebate_locator.
For more information, contact Kate Lewis, Energy Star marketing manager, at (202) 343-9024 or lewis.kate@epa.gov.
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