Siemens Industry - Energy Audit for Lake Worth to grab $20 million of your money

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Well, it's probably not a scam but it definitely is being sold by an expert salesman who makes big bucks to convince deep pocketed municipalities to partner up. The only thing that will be "energized" will be your "walking wallet," a phrase coined by Peter Timm.

A. Hector Samario, Siemens Industry, Inc., (a salesman) will be at a city of Lake Worth tonight to give a 26 page Power Point presentation in order to provide an update on Energy Performance Contracting Services. They will try and convince this commission to take on a partner to implement their ideas on how Lake Worth can be more energy efficient. This is about SMART GRIDS and SMART METERING.

"Mr. Samario is on the Board of Directors of the USGBC South Florida as Vice President. Hector Samario, LEED AP, a Senior Project Executive with Siemens Industries, Inc., works with municipalities, counties and school districts to develop energy and water conservation strategies aimed at reducing utility consumption, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the overall cost of operations. Moreover, the strategies developed have the additional focus of creating and/or maintaining "green" jobs in the local economies." Their targeted and lucrative market has the deep pockets from taxpayers.

Back on April 1, 2014, every single commissioner voted to hire Siemens Industry to conduct an audit on energy efficiency--Peter Timm, the resident this commission loves to muzzle, spoke out saying we could not afford this $148,000 audit.  Siemens only charged the County $89,000 for an audit. Suzanne Squire said that we paid $199,400 for Energize Lake Worth (a study by Lewis, Longman and Walker) for the same service (Read the PBPost article) and asked that city money not be wasted. Bornstein brought it to the table and now it appears that the audit might be complete.  If the plan is accepted, we are obligated to enter into an energy performance contract and/or pay the $148,000 audit fee. 

Siemens says that its guarantee ensures energy consumption savings throughout the contract period. If the agreed upon energy goals are not met, Siemens pays the shortfall. If your energy savings surpass the Guarantee goals, you receive 100 percent of the excess savings – an unbeatable formula they say. After the initial implementation is done, in a sense, free of charge, with the payment coming from the percentage of the energy savings collected by a financing company or the ESCO.

Now nothing is free.  That's my take on it. This all would have to be paid by the taxpayers in some form and Siemens is there to "help" the city to that end when this crack jack administration (that already wasted $200,000 of your money on Energize Lake Worth) decides to implement their audit findings. That's the only way you might come out ahead. You can't save money until you implement their suggestions.  And you can't save money until you go into debt. Until you do that, you owe them. And how much is this contract?

Scope of Work
$20M - $25M Project
Annual Guaranteed Savings $2M - $2.5M 

So, this is about borrowing $20 to 25 million over approximately 20 years or putting it on your tax bill. They can help our new finance director craft financial options that meet the city's  requirements and get as creative as the last idea (still on the table), the general obligation bond for infrastructure.  Remember, that finance director disappeared in the middle of the night?

• Standard general obligation bonds
• Revenue bonds
• Tax-exempt municipal leases
• Capital leases
• Energy services off-balance sheet agreements

In June 2005, the GAO released a report, “Energy Savings: Performance Contracts Offer Benefits, But Vigilance Is Needed To Protect Government Interests. The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Technology, Acquisition, and Logistics agreed with the GAO findings. “While these complicated contracts are structured to ensure that savings will exceed costs,” the DOD noted, “we recognize that our measurement and verification procedures must be improved to confirm estimates with actual data.” Unverified savings, often stipulated rather than proven, do not put more oil in the ground, take CO₂ out of the air or reduce operating budgets.

You've heard that old saying--If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Energy and Carbon Management says that the biggest barrier is the lack of appropriate, low-cost, long-term financing.  The biggest problem here is that the city continues to have pipe dreams to spend millions that they do not have.

And we can't even fix a pothole.

Hacking Smart Meters  of a Utility