Redi-Volt lookalike?

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Don Barker

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Mike,

I have been asked by a customer to resarch/substantiate a particular offering that a vendor has made to them regarding energy saving measures. The vendor Is Innovative Cost Solutions (Green Bay, WI) and they are touting an offering that is very much like the offerings of Redi-Volt vendors.

They don't directly say what they will do to save the energy that they claim they can, but will guarantee 25-30% energy savings and are supposedly backing this up with a cash payoff at years end if they are not able to reach this goal.

They mention that their product (called an Easiliner) has the ability to "straighten out" the sine wave and remove "damaging harmonics" resulting in some fairly incredible energy savings. Thay claim they can do this on lighting circuits, motor feeds, chillers, etc.

My customer is leary (calling it smoke and mirrors), but at the same time intriqued by the financial guarantee. I have read the forums on the Redi-Volt product and actually have a customer that has them in their facility. They have had several expolsions of the TVSS units and never were able to substantiate the savings that were promised, much less collect on the financial guarantee. I would hate to see this new customer suffer the same consequences.

Are you familiar with this technology by any chance? Do you know of anybody who has bought into this system? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,


Don Barker
 
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Don, Mike very rarely posts in the forums, however there are many knowledgable people here that can help.

As far as your subject, IMO it's snake oil. :)

Roger
 
Don Barker said:
My customer is leary (calling it smoke and mirrors), but at the same time intriqued by the financial guarantee.
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Ay, there?s the rub!

By intrigued I'm assuming you mean the ($$) are over riding the instincts and common sense. Get's 'em every time.
 
Don, welcome to the forum! :)

Don Barker said:
They have had several expolsions of the TVSS units and never were able to substantiate the savings that were promised, much less collect on the financial guarantee. I would hate to see this new customer suffer the same consequences.
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Then you know how you should advise. Ask the old customer if the new customer may call for an end-user opinion.
 
bob said:
I found the web site. They do not say exactly what they do.

http://www.innovativecostsolutions.net/
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They do mention adding vars to the system. In a commercial/industrial situation, there can definitely be some saving in certain cases. In residential: highly unlikely. They do seem to be focused on non-residential, which is good.

Some of the cost reductions quoted almost have to be coupled with other changes like lighting retro-fits, conservation, etc. or some high excess kvar penalties.

Nicely done web site.
 
Bob, you are correct as regards them being focused on non-residential. You mentioned vars. Can you eleoborate on that subject? You said there could be some savings there. I'm not looking to defame the offering and would be just as willing to forward positve info as negative, but if they are giving the customer the "snake oil" as everyone calls it, I want to steer him away.

As far as I know, they haven't talked about anything other than intalling their devices and watch the savings grow. I'd be interested in hearing more about the vars.

Thanks,

Don
 
Don Barker said:
Bob, you are correct as regards them being focused on non-residential. You mentioned vars. Can you elaborate on that subject? You said there could be some savings there. I'd be interested in hearing more about the vars.
Thanks,
Don
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I think you meant to respond to Miley's post but I will comment. Some large commercial and industrial customers are billed on KWH's + a KW demand charge. Some are billed on KWH's and a KVA charge. Those customers billed on a KVA charge are said to be billed as a power factor penalty. A example might be a customer who has a KVA demand of 1200 and a pf of 0.80. At $5.00 per KVA they would have an additional charge of $6000.00 per month. By adding the correct size of capacitors you can reduce the KVA demand to 1000 KVA and a pf of 1.0. This would be a reduction of $1000 per month. Remember this is an example.
This is a common method of reducing energy bills. No magic here.
However, you customer must meet the criteria given regarding the billing form the utility. I do not see how they can guarantee a 25% saving in advance with out checking the electrical system. Remember you can only save what you are wasting. If you have installed energy saving features such as lighting, new A/C systems etc, the saving might be zero.
 
Don - You might want to contact these guys and have them supply a list of customers that you can call for a reference, and ask for actual bill savings amounts. Also be sure to ask what other system adjustments were done at the same time (i.e. lighting retrofits, new temp controllers, etc.)

In my experience with seeing these types of 'energy savings devices', there is no such animal that just bolts onto your existing system and miraculously saves you $$. 99.9% of these systems fall into the old adage "If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is."

As someone already said, you can only save what you don't use. If they start suggesting new motors, ballasts, lights and a bunch of other things besides the miracle device, then that would indicate that the device does little or nothing with how much energy you use (or not).

IMHO...its wasted money and the device does nothing to save $$.
 
I can't get to the company's web site, since I am using someone else's computer and I can't install the feature their web site requires. So I can't look at their statement of guarantee.

I will only offer the caution that you read their guarantee carefully, and in particular read the process by which they will measure the "before and after" costs to prove the cost savings. I saw one company's process, clearly a "legal scam," by which I mean they supply exactly what they say they supply, but it is not what you think it is, so they are not lying. The process was that they measured power usage, shut down the plant, installed their "stuff," turned power back on, measured again, showed that power usage had dropped, and required the owner to pay a monthly percentage of the energy savings to them forever thereafter (based on that one set of before and after measurements). It would not matter if the actual energy usage over the next months and years went up or down, because they "proved the cost savings" immediately after their "stuff" was installed. Never mind that the plant was operating at full capacity for the "before" measurement, and power had just been turned back on (without restarting all the plant equipment) for the "after" measurement.

Caveat emptor!
 
another name for the same old scam

another name for the same old scam

I have had several people ask me similar questions regarding these so called power savers, neutral power correction devices etc. In most if not all residential services the meters are KWH meters. They do not charge for KVAR therefore there is no savings. In my area of Florida most commercial buildings are also KWH meters, once again no savings. Unfortunately we had a increase in our electrical rates of about 35% so these sellers of snake oil are thriving.
I had the opportunity of meeting the people who sell one of these products. The work sheet they used to determine savings was humorous at best. First they listed what savings would be on the entire service which was in amps. Which they listed at 20 amps per day!! Amps are not the savings KWH are. Next they showed additional savings for refrigerators, coolers, condensors etc. WHen I asked how they could add a second deduction for this since the first kvar unit already had this quoted savings in it, They at a loss for words. I then asked if they understood the laws of physics which states energy can not be created or destroyed. Once again no answer. Needless to say my customer will be getting a refund for these devices.
 
I was just looking at there site, when I read this:

Under "What We Do"

Point 9:

Presents clients with a risk free option for gaining immediate positive cash flow improvements and protects clients from often inaccurate and costly advice from internal staff, third party engineers, and local utilities, who are willing to undertake electrical efficiency projects, yet lack the experience and skills needed to do so competently.
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"And protects our clients from"

From what? being told they are buying snake oil? H'mmmm:roll:
 
hurk27 said:
I was just looking at there site, when I read this:



"And protects our clients from"

From what? being told they are buying snake oil? H'mmmm:roll:
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I like the risk free part. I wonder if they would install this stuff on their own dime and only take payment after verification from an independent 3rd party?
 
raider1 said:
Per the request of Innovative Cost Solutions this thread has been re-opened.
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Will a representative of that company be joining this forum, and may we expect a comment from that representative?

I will reiterate my comment from 17 months ago (see post #10 above):
charlie b said:
I will only offer the caution that you read their guarantee carefully, and in particular read the process by which they will measure the "before and after" costs to prove the cost savings.
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And now I will ask the representative of Innovative Cost Solutions to post a copy of that guarantee here, along with a description of their process of measuring and demonstrating cost savings. I was not able to find that information on their web site.

 
charlie b said:
Will a representative of that company be joining this forum, and may we expect a comment from that representative?
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Yes, a representative of that company is the one who requested that the thread be re-opened so they would have an opportunity to respond to some of the comments.

Chris
 
LJSMITH1 said:
Don - You might want to contact these guys and have them supply a list of customers that you can call for a reference, and ask for actual bill savings amounts. Also be sure to ask what other system adjustments were done at the same time (i.e. lighting retrofits, new temp controllers, etc.) .
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The key is to make the effort to contact customer references to verify. There have been cases where other products with similar claims misrepresent the ""satisfied" end users. I even heard some may represent the names & company of folks that have merely made an RFI as "users".

I couldn't find the company referenced by the OP in the Better Business Bureau database. Not a good sign.
 
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