Case Study
lyon shipyard INC.
Overview
Lyon Shipyard, Inc.(LSI) is a repair facility in Norfolk, VA with over 80 years of service to the maritime industry. Electricity is a large expense for LSI so they reached out to UMS for a utility bill analysis.
The UMS analysts found erratic peak demands, indicative of billing errors, and requested a meter test. LSI’s power provider performed the test, stating that the meter was registering correctly.
UMS then analyzed LSI’s demand data for each 30-minute interval over a 12-month period. This indicated the unusual peak demand was during a single 30-minute period. The demand in that period was 300% higher than the demand in any other 30-minute period during the year! A review of LSI’s operating records indicated nothing unusual during that period.
With this discovery, a registered Professional Engineer from UMS visited LSI to inspect the equipment and see if it had the capacity to carry the billed demand. UMS found that the billed demand was greater than the equipment load at the site. It also revealed that to carry the billed demand, LSI’s provider’s transformer would have needed to carry 196% of its capacity and the customer’s main circuit breakers would have needed to carry 133% of their rated capacity. With this finding, LSI’s power provider agreed that there was a billing error and provided a $37,669.60 refund.
UMS also identified significant additional savings opportunities for LSI resulting in over $233,000 in total annual savings.
The Facts
- Lyon Shipyard in Norfolk, VA is a ship repair facility with over 80 years of experience in the maritime industry
- UMS analysts started the analysis and found erratic peak demands indicative of billing errors
- UMS requested a meter test from LSI's power provider to check the equitment and the power provider concluded the equipment was operating correctly
- After further analysis UMS was sure that the equipment was in fact not working correctly and sent a UMS registered engineer to LSI to test it themselves
- It was found that the power provider's equipment could not even hold the demand that was being billed to LSI
- UMS presented this finding to LSI's power provider again who eventually took responsibility for the error and issued a refund to LSI