The city is looking at options for power and gas consulting.
In November 2017, the city retained Jim Morin as its energy consultant.
He’s helped the city evaluate natural gas supply and energy contracts in recent years to help city staff execute new contracts.
Morin discussed the services his firm offers during their Feb. 6 work session in addition to his assistance in reviewing contracts. He’s worked with city staff and presented those options to commissioners previously.
His company uses an energy management platform that takes all power and gas invoices to analyze the data to see where the city is spending on energy.
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Morin said there’s weather normalization logic in the system that accounts for weather impacts on managing energy costs. If the city hired his company, he said his team would go back two years into invoices to create a databank as a benchmark.
That would help the city when looking at retrofitting buildings to put in HVAC or other energy systems, he said, since it’s important to have a benchmark to measure savings.
He said that his system can also capture greenhouse emissions data and that he believes cities will eventually have to keep track of be accountable for those emissions.
He said his firm can also watch demand charges, which are becoming an important part of energy bills and that could impact the city’s water and wastewater treatment plants. That data could help the city potentially adjust operations at those plants based on when demand costs are lower, he said.
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Morin said that the city would have a $38,500 one-time onboarding cost and an ongoing monthly account maintenance fee of $4,250. He said it would be a three-year contract, but since they go back two years to review data, it’s really five years of activity.
He said over that time, his firm would review about 16,000 invoices and 20,000 meter reads.
In light of how much technical information is on an invoice, Morin said the possibility of error is fairly common and sometimes significant.
The analytical information gives more power and insight to city management to better control energy spending and usage, Morin told commissioners. The system can help show which buildings are using the most energy per square footage and help make adjustments.
His firm’s system can also automate some functions for the city in terms of paying invoices and he estimated that savings at $100,000 over the contract term.
Commissioner Rick Tryon asked who was currently doing the work to manage energy use and costs.
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Morin and city staff said they don’t have anyone to do that level of work.
He said cities on the east coast are mandating that they analyze their energy usage and costs and some agencies are being required to make that data public.
Tryon asked what it cost the city to this work now.
Melissa Kinzler, city finance director, said that in the account payable section of her office, they get 240-278 invoices monthly to process.
She said they review them to see if they’re similar to previous months or there’s any major increases and then process those payments.
“When you read a bill sometimes it looks like Greek,” Kinzler said, since they aren’t experts in energy.
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She said there was no analysis going on within the city now for energy usage and cost management outside of looking for major changes.
Kinzler said she didn’t believe hiring Morin’s company would cut a city position, but they’ve have more monitoring and could free some finance staff time to handle other tasks.
“There’s a lot of time and effort that we spend on NorthWestern energy bills,” she said.
She said it’s very technical and city staff doesn’t have that expertise and they can’t determine what they’ll need for energy going into the future.
Deputy City Manager Chuck Anderson said that some city facilities are high energy users and having the analysis could help shift operations for savings.
City staff and Morin said the city has an energy contract expiring in November and there’s work to do to prepare and they’re concerned about increasing costs.
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Kinzler said that Great Falls Public Schools uses Morin’s firm.
She said she called Brian Patrick, GFPS’ business operations manager, and he said it had been invaluable to help them monitor any issues. They use Morin’s system to track water, sewer, storm drain, electricity and gas usage, she said.
