NRG Helps Businesses Reach Their Sustainability Goals

Download and read our full 2017 Sustainability Report here.

Business Solutions Overview

The Business Solutions team makes sustainability a reality for organizations by developing unique energy solutions based on each customer’s needs. These solutions include demand response, commodity sales, access to renewable energy, asset-backed distributed energy systems, energy efficiency measures and energy management services. Responding to the demand of ROI-driven companies, our projects span multiple industries and an equally diverse range of solutions. See a complete list of offerings here.

Access drives solutions:

Our belief is that the best path to an optimal, sustainable energy solution starts with access to energy expertise and experience. For our business customers, this takes hold in a number of ways:

Consultative-based approach:

Our experts work with businesses to help them capture the full power of sustainable energy, from idea to implementation. Their consultative approach is backed by an integrated platform of solutions as well as perspective that includes:

• Foresight: the ability to review each customer’s portfolio, optimize existing systems and strategies, decipher market complexities and provide a roadmap of integrated energy solutions
• Diligence: the follow through to design sustainable energy goals and strategies, perform an integrated solutions option analysis and identify a sustainable energy action plan

Efficiency-based approach:

We make energy efficiency a reality for businesses through a proven audit process designed to uncover specific improvement measures and actions. The audit is objective, thorough and becomes the foundation for an informed recommendation that can be:

• Strategic: a wide-ranging energy initiative resulting from an intensive review and engagement with each customer’s business, overall energy approach and daily energy consumption 
• Tactical: a recommendation that is quickly executed, provides clear ROI value and can become the foundation for a larger-scale energy approach to follow

Energy optimization-based approach

We are committed to providing customers with the most comprehensive energy usage consultation in the industry. This area’s focus begins with in-depth load analysis and strategic energy supply review. That review leads to customized energy management strategies for each customer, including:

• Electricity and Natural Gas Supply: analysis, planning and contract structures create a sound and sustainable energy management plan
• Demand-Side Management: helping businesses reduce their energy usage during times of high demand creates a win-win result for customers and the grid
• Distributed Energy Resources: bringing resilient, measurable and sustainable value to customers through onsite, behind-the-meter solutions matched to their energy use

Solution examples

Perhaps the best way to demonstrate our ability to deliver sustainable energy to businesses and communities is through the specific solutions we have recently put in place. Here are four examples:

• Skybox Datacenters When Skybox began developing a new data center, they were looking for a way to power it with a new level of efficiency, reliability and sustainability. To do that, the NRG Business Solutions team developed a multi-faceted energy solution that includes: •
• Solar: photovoltaic panel on the outside parking canopy and berm provide enough capacity to power the center’s office suite
• Backup generation: dual 2MW backup generators with 96- hour onsite fuel supply, operational in five seconds for an enhanced level of reliability
• Demand response program: reduces power needs on the grid during high-demand periods in exchange for financial incentives, bringing a revenue stream into the center’s overall energy approach
• Cooling efficiencies: dual 400-ton chillers with Evaporcool® technology that provides a 30% efficiency increase, plus decreased electricity usage and maintenance
• Electricity: a 100% green (wind) power electricity contract that avoids 12.4M lbs. CO2 annually and helps the datacenter reach its sustainability goals

Cisco

Cisco’s sustainability vision has become a reality through our offsite solar solution – helping the company meet its 2017 sustainability goals to reduce GHG emissions by 40% and to use renewable energy for at least 25% of its power needs each year. The offsite nature of the solution was uniquely suited for both financial and logistical considerations. It leveraged the renewable power produced by the Blythe II solar project, located 550 miles away, to meet 10% of Cisco’s electricity needs each year. The actual energy created by the facility powers the local grid while Cisco receives renewable energy credits (RECs) that go toward its sustainability goals.

Toshiba

Toshiba collaborated with us to deploy a new, cutting-edge battery energy storage system within the Texas (ERCOT) grid. The Elbow Creek Energy Storage project is a lithium-ion-based Toshiba battery system capable of storing and delivering up to 2 megawatts (MW) of electrical power. The system, located near the Elbow Creek Wind Farm in Howard County Texas, is designed for applications that enhance the stability of the electric grid. The project is expected to demonstrate the environmentally beneficial impact and commercial viability of siting energy storage technology amidst the growing hub of renewable generation in West Texas. The project was funded in part by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, as part of their Texas Emissions Reduction Plan.

Community Solar – Farmington, MN

Community Solar is an idea that took hold in 2017 at several locations in three states: New York, Massachusetts and Minnesota. At the Farmington, MN location, in addition to bringing a renewable solution to businesses and homes who may have thought their location precluded them from considering solar, another environment benefit has also taken hold. Here, native flowers and meadow grasses have become an abundant habitat for pollinators – the bees and other insects that move pollen between flowering plants. To make it happen, NRG planted pollinator-friendly seed mixes in the land under and around the solar farm and also contracted with a local firm to jumpstart the growth of the plants by installing mature plants as well. From here, bee hives for honey production (apiaries) have co-located on the site producing an end product known as “solar honey.” All in all, it represents a sustainable success story on many levels. In terms of the solar installation itself and the renewable energy generated, the Farmington facility is comprised of nearly 20,000 solar panels and has 191 residential customers enrolled along with two commercial subscribers. To date, the farm has produced more than 1M kWh of clean, renewable energy. The site is one of 10 community solar installations NRG has put in place in Minnesota alone. Among the well-known corporate subscribers are U.S. Bank, Ecolab, Macy’s and Land O’Lakes. 

Download and read our full 2017 Sustainability Report here.