We're looking at a new facility in Akron and FirstEnergy is offering primary service at 13.2kV. The tariff shows a $0.85/kW discount on demand charges but we'd need to buy and maintain our own transformer. Anyone done the math on this? Initial transformer cost is around $45K for a 1500kVA unit.
FirstEnergy primary service discount - worth the transformer cost?
Jim - we made that switch at our Cleveland plant in 2009. The discount was $0.78/kW back then on Schedule GP-1. With 800kW demand, we saved about $7,500 annually. Transformer paid for itself in 4.5 years, plus you get better power quality control. Just make sure you budget for maintenance and testing.
The discount varies by utility but it's usually substantial. Duquesne Light gives us $1.12/kW discount for primary service. Our 1200kW facility saves $16,128 annually just on the demand charge difference. Don't forget to factor in the avoided utility transformer losses too - that's another 1-2% energy savings.
Georgia Power's Schedule PL-1 primary service discount is currently $1.05/kW. We switched three facilities and the payback was 3-4 years on each. The real benefit comes from owning your power factor correction - we went from 0.85 to 0.98 lagging and eliminated all PF penalties.
Thanks everyone. Frank - did you have any issues with FirstEnergy during the switchover? I'm hearing conflicting info about whether they require redundant protection or just standard overcurrent protection on the customer side.
Jim - FirstEnergy required full differential protection and supervisory control for our installation. Added about $8K to the project but they were pretty strict on the protective relay requirements. Check their Electric Service Requirements manual - it's all spelled out there.
We're seeing similar requirements from Georgia Power. Primary service customers need protective relaying that coordinates with their system. Usually means differential, overcurrent, and sometimes voltage/frequency protection. It's worth it though - the demand savings alone justified our switch.
One more thing Jim - make sure you get a good electrical contractor who understands utility coordination. We had some headaches initially because our first contractor didn't properly set the relay coordination with FirstEnergy's upstream protection. Caused some unnecessary outages during testing.