PUB announced on 6th April that a new grant will be introduced to encourage cooling tower users in Singapore to adopt water saving technologies.
This grant is an enhancement of PUB's existing Water Efficiency Fund (WEF). Details have just been released this week.
If your site uses more than 1000 m³ a month, and the technology you implement can save more than 100m³ a month you will qualify. Sounds easy, but the devil is in the details.
Grant Amount: whichever is LESSER
In other words, the actual subsidy given is greatly dependent on how much water is saved.
Devil Is in the Details : Grant Computation
The following is the actual computation PUB uses for water saving incentive:
An Example
To illustrate this, we can will use the following example.
For a building with average cooling load of 500RT and currently running at 8 COC, the estimated blowdown would be 6m³ per day.
How much would the grant be if a technology improves the COC to 15 versus improving to 40?
8 COC to 15 COC:
Blowdown from 6m³ to 3.2m³ per day = 2.8m³ reduction
8 COC to 40 COC:
Blowdown from 6m³ to 1.2m³ per day = 4.8m³ reduction
If the cost of installing the technology is $45,000. This would mean the technology that improves to 15 COC would be subsidised 24.1%, and the 40COC technology will be subsidised 41.4%.
In both cases, this amount is lesser than the 50% of Total Cost, so the lesser amount of 24.1% and 41.4% will be used in the grant amount.
Implications: PUB encouraging rethink of traditional methods
Incremental improvement via traditional chemical methods would struggle to improve COC to 11 or higher and even with expensive equipment and set up will have difficulty reaching 15 COC.
PUB is likely encouraging building owners and facilities professional to rethink the traditional approach to cooling tower water management.
The technology to provide this quantum leap is already out there. And PUB is encouraging facilities professionals to explore them. Our DCI technology is one such technology that is battle-tested under BCA's multi-year Super Low Energy Building challenge.
For more information on DCI: www.deston.com.sg
Details on PUB's WEF grant:
More information on PUB's WEF grant can be found on their webpage.