Sometimes it takes money to save money, and the Wichita County commissioners are deciding just how much it’s going to take to see savings in their energy and utilities bills.

The county received a 30 percent-completion update from AMERESCO Monday morning, who is doing an investment-grade audit of the county’s electrical, natural gas and water usage.

Lisa Stickler with AMERESCO said they are about two weeks into the review and needed some input from the court on how much funding the county wanted to put into the process.

For one part of the process – energy savings performance contracting (ESPC) – the county would see savings from energy-efficiency changes large enough to cover the cost of the projects.

Projects in this range would be switching lighting to LED or setting up programmable air-conditioning systems.

Once debt service on these projects are paid for, they even have the potential to realize excess savings.

Unfortunately, she said, there are some large equipment upgrades needed – chillers, boilers and HVAC systems – in which the price of a new piece of equipment would be higher than the savings realized from that purchase.

Some of these items, such as a large chiller, can be $300,000 to $400,000 each.

While a new equipment purchase can be burdensome, Stickler said, this “capital infusion” would benefit the county in the long run through greater reliability and better energy efficiency.

In the initial phase of investigation, AMERESCO reviewed the county’s energy bills for the past three years. They also viewed in-person and through aerial mapping systems, all the county’s utility-related equipment.

Many of the items have already reached the end of their useful life, Stickler said, including some chillers at the courthouse that were more than 20 years old.

Commissioner Jeff Watts said they knew they would have to invest some capital funding in improvements and, luckily, the county is in a good place financial with good borrowing power.

Buildings reviewed include the county courthouse, juvenile probation center, juvenile alternative education center, emergency management office, Precinct 2 building in Burkburnett, Precinct 3 building in Iowa Park, Precinct 4 building in Electra, courthouse annex and Lindemman building.

The county’s Sprague Jail Annex was not included in this investigation as the county will be moving jail operations to the new Law Enforcement Center within the next two years – not long enough to realize savings from any project at Sprague.

Early estimates, before this meeting, were possibly $1 million that the county would invest in capital funding.

After reviewing the recommended projects for nine county buildings, Stickler gave a rough estimate of $2 million to $3 million, if the county completed all the recommendations.

An average of the past three years of billing show the county paid about $400,000 annually for electricity, $47,000 for natural gas and about $116,000 for water.

Savings in electrical consumption, for example, could see a savings of possibly 15 to 20 percent, AMERESCO said, with proposed changes.

Those savings – perhaps up to $100,000 – could then go toward the energy improvement projects.

The group made some recommendations for water savings, but said financially these savings are not as impactful as electrical projects.

Looking at an energy utilization index, the courthouse, for example, scored a 123.9. As comparison, a property used for a jail facility is an average of 93.2. A building of just office use is an average 67.3.

From these preliminary consultation measures, Stickler said they can see the courthouse and several other county buildings could benefit from projects to increase their energy efficiency and decrease usage.

Almost all the county buildings they evaluated are experiencing “creep,” or bills that increase more each year. Providing newer equipment and energy controls could stem this swelling tide of cost.

The next step of the AMERESCO process will involve a cumulative list of recommendations detailing each building, each piece of equipment in the county and what cost-savings could be realized.

After that, the county will approve the desired projects and either complete the work in house or bid it out to contractors.