Experience 2

Cambridge Savings Bank (CSB) has 13-branches in Greater Boston, with $2 billion in assets. Since 2002, they have managed to reduce energy usage by 20 percent, despite the addition of three branches.
Hill Energy Services serves as CSB’s energy adviser, providing technical, utilities budgeting and energy procurement services. We also provide the benchmarking and labeling support for the Bank’s participation in the US EPA’s Energy Star Program. Cambridge Savings’ retail banking centers were the first bank branches in the country to earn the Energy Star designation. The Bank was recognized by the Energy Star Leaders Program for its efforts.

C&S Wholesale Grocers, Inc. is the 7th largest privately-held company in
the nation, with annual sales of over $19 billion. Hill Energy Services served as C&S’ Outsourced Energy Manager for over six years. In this role, we worked with the Facilities, Finance and other departments to manage over $35 million in annual utilities and fuel spending. During this period, savings and avoided costs averaged $2.3 million per year. Some of the challenges that we faced with C&S were:

Refrigeration Controls were operating on manual override and wasting energy. We worked with the Corporate Director of Refrigeration to reset controls for fan and compressor operations along tighter parameters. This was done without expensive reprogramming.
Inefficient Facilities: Older facilities suffered from low maintenance budgets and high operating cost. Hill Energy developed and championed facility upgrades to increase energy efficiency and improve conditions. These included improvments to lighting systems, HVAC equipment, building controls, dock doors and roofing.
Energy Procurement: C&S was not taking advantage of its size to leverage energy procurement and get better pricing for electricity, natuiral gas, heating oil and propane. We used a variety of energy procurement strategies (fixed-price contracts, block power purchases, NYMEX+basis floating contracts, etc) to find the best fits between facility needs and National/Regional market patterns. We incorporated our strategic knowledge of the energy markets into budgeting for electricity and heating costs.