Lonnie Harrison – Maintenance Manager
Bear Mountain Forest Products

• Lonnie single-handedly moved Bear Mountain Forest Products from a non-participant in Energy Trust of Oregon programs to one of the more active sites pursuing capital project upgrades and participating in Strategic Energy Management.
• In total, Lonnie led efforts to complete 19 projects in First Year SEM, and he has completed 7 more projects with 10 others in progress to date in this year’s SEM effort. Collectively, these projects have reduced the site’s electric use by roughly 9% and gas use by 4%

2022 Wrench of the Year – Commercial Sector Winner: Phil Akerill

Phil Akerill – Lead HVAC Technician
City of Vancouver

• Phil was instrumental in advocating for, executing, and holding contractors accountable for major controls upgrades in at least three City of Vancouver buildings in 2022
• In all facilities Phil took the time to tailor schedules, setpoints, and even outside air ventilation to each specific zone per bldg, saving an impressive 300,000 kWh.

Ken Kelso – Process Improvement Engineer
Meduri Farms Inc.

• During the 2021 year of SEM, Meduri Farms is currently saving 157,552 kWh and 53,297 therms, exceeding their goals for the year (2021 savings still unofficial as of 11/3/21). These savings represent a utility level savings of 4.5% of their total natural gas use and 4% of their total electric use.

2021 Wrench of the Year – Honorable Mention: Roger Courtain

Roger Courtain – Facilities Engineer
Siltronic Group

• Roger Courtain has been instrumental to the team’s success in identifying over 250 opportunities, implementing nearly 40 in the first year, and perhaps most importantly, ensuring ongoing persistence.
• By the end of Siltronic’s first year in SEM, implemented projects resulted in estimated annual energy cost savings of $82,600. Plus, Energy Trust provided cash incentives of $55,000 towards the company’s SEM participation and energy-saving improvements.

Bryce Majors – WWTP Supervisor
City of Astoria

• Bryce was responsible for developing new standard operating procedures at the Astoria Wastewater Treatment Plant to optimize the runtimes of the facility’s largest energy users, 9 mixers/blowers (total input power of 132.8 kW). This project significantly reduced the system runtime by an average of 44% while maintaining necessary DO levels. This achieved a calculated savings of 480,513 kWh, which is equal to 31.1% savings from the facility’s baseload across the entire plant and pump/lift stations

Chris Gramson – Senior Utility Technician
City of Astoria

• Chris was responsible for implementing a wide range of projects across the wastewater treatment plant and auxiliary facilities, including the installation of various sensors, and lighting upgrades to improve efficiency. In total, Chris took the lead on 23 projects and supported a variety of others. These included putting a host of exhaust fans and heaters on temperature sensors, various lights on motion and astronomical sensors along with LED upgrades.

2020 Wrench of the Year – Runner Up: Ron Litschewski

Ron Litschewski – Facilities Plumber
Boeing

• Over the course of 2020, facilities plumber Ron Litschewski (aka Ski), working on the 3rd shift of the Boeing Portland plant, took it upon himself to fix most of the 1M+ kWh of estimated annual savings tied up in 280+ compressed air leaks found during four days of leak sweeps.

Alex Gerasimenko – Process Engineer and Energy Champion
Vitro

• In the first year of SEM, these efforts added up to just under 1 million kWh in energy savings (over 5% of the facility’s total consumption)

Troy Fletcher – School Maintenance Director
Wendell School District

• Digging deep for 851,000 kWh of savings from a small school district on a budget of $24,000.

2019 Wrench of the Year – Honorable Mention: Joe Valdivia, Ron Prince, Terry Johnson

Joe Valdivia – Controls Technician and Energy Champion
Roseburg Forest Products

• The team has focused on waste conveyance, compressed air, lighting and dust collection and has completed over 70 projects in the past year.
• Over the past three years the team has saved 8.8 million kWh.

Ron Prince – Facility Services Manager and Energy Champion
Legacy Mount Hood Medical Center

• EUI has been reduced an additional 5.5% in 2019. This reduction is on top of a 10.8% reduction in EUI from 2012 – 2018.

Terry Johnson – Industrial Refrigeration Mechanic
Ajinomoto

• Energy savings for the project was over 600,000 kWh with significant therms savings as well. This is roughly 5% savings for a site that uses 12.3 million kWh annually.

Experts from David’s Nomination:

“By working daily with the maintenance and operations personnel, David was able to balance the current production needs of the facility with the need to modernize for efficiency and future product requirements.  He was able to present ideas to company board, overcome skepticism and win approval for funding.  David oversaw every aspect of these projects from procurement through construction and optimization of the installed systems.

This project resulted in Great Western Malting being named the Association of Washington Business’ 2018 Manufacturing Excellence Award for Green Manufacturing. The project covered energy saving measures across two different buildings and included new misting nozzles for water reduction and new fans for better airflow. One building system realized a 28% decrease in electric energy and the other 42%, resulting in more than 3 million kilowatt hours of electric energy saved annually. In addition, water usage across the site dropped by more than 90% and completely eliminated the effluent stream that entered the Columbia River, over 800 million gallons a year saved. Chemicals used to treat water was also significantly reduced.

David succeeded because he was able to get the plant operators, maintenance, and management team to stay focused on the overall goal of reducing cost and maintaining quality.”

Excerpts from Curtis’s Nomination:

“Curtis had a significant role in overseeing and implementing several energy efficiency projects at several Freres Lumber locations this year, including a huge LED lighting upgrade, compressed air leak repair and demand reduction, compressed air dryer upgrade, and dryer fan VFD control.

Focusing on the dryer fan VFD control project, Curtis was involved in this project from conception to completion. Curtis recognized the energy savings potential and then he made the controls changes and took ownership of VFD speed testing. The controls change (speed reduction) itself was the simplest part really; the hard part was getting the plant to the point that they were willing to take a risk for potentially large energy savings.

Between two plants, the dryer fan speed reduction project saved 1,296,831 kWh annually, which saves the company over $65,000 in electricity costs per year. This represents approximately 3% of the two sites’ total consumption.”