6. How does The First Energy Group know what I have and properly specify what needs to be upgraded?
Our auditors will spend a fair amount of time at your facility reviewing what building technologies you have and how you use them. Later, we take this information and enter it into proprietary energy conservation templates. Using a combination of custom developed software, proprietary product databases and energy modeling rules, along with some good old fashioned human review, we make our recommendations. Unless reasons dictate otherwise our goal is to always provide better conditions after we leave. Besides saving you money we always design for higher quality lighting, better controlled heating and cooling, longer lasting equipment, equipment that requires less maintenance, and maximizing your expected returns on your improvements.
Our philosophy is to use state of the art technologies and energy conservation techniques. We do not use “cutting edge” technology unless requested or we specifically inform you. Your facility is sacred to us. Just like doctors our internal Hippocratic oaths requires us before all else “To do no harm” and "Don't get in your way".
Typically the equipment we specify is more expensive than standard issue. The biggest reason for this is the mentality of how energy technologies are purchased. Almost every purchase is based upon the recommendation of an outside entity such as an architect, engineer, or a contractor. Each one of these has been trained, if not by your company then by other clients, to offer you energy technology systems that are competitively priced. They have little incentive to educate you. They see llittle incentive to change what has worked for them for the last 20 years. We’re not knocking them. It’s just that their core competency isn’t energy engineering. That’s what The First Energy Group does and that’s why we know when to invest in higher quality equipment and when not to. Technology keeps improving and we keep up with it – that’s our expertise.
Most buyers shop for lower up-front costs. They often aren’t trained to ask the proper questions regarding first costs vs. operating costs. And, even if they are, they may not have the available time or proper resources available to ask. Plus, often the environment around them encourages buying low at the expense of future profits. Although typically they aren’t even aware of how significant a decision is even being made. It has been our experience that most decisions are made based upon the trust in a local contractor. And, while this contractor may be great at what they do it's rare that contractors are very proficient at energy management techniques – that’s just not their core competency – even if they claim it is.
The equipment we specify may initially appear more expensive. However, because it operates more effectively it is actually less expensive. And, The First Energy Group structures our proposals so that your savings can always pay for the entire upgrade. In effect our improvements buy themselves!
