Any Potential Savings For Large Motors

Hello everyone,

First of all, I wanted to say this is an excellent forum, and even though the terminology is a little different in the states (metric instead of US standard) all the concepts are the same. Anyways, I am part of a team to begin saving money with our large motors (2000Hp) and fans (102" blades). The system consists of four motors and fans in parallel with one set on backup. The system consists of numerous dampers throughout to limit the air flow depending upon the application. Unfortunately, our power company and EPA have some stringent regulations on our plant:

1) while the fans are in operation, they must draw minimum kWhr rate, regardless of system needs (imposed by the EPA)
2) the power utility does not charge for poor power factor
3) the kWhr price does fluctuate, but that is dependent upon the supply and demand of the community needs and are not any increases in price during high surge applications

thankfully, I read the website wasting a lot of time investigating these so called "energy saver" devices since they would appear to work in this application. We looked into the soft starters and VFD, but the soft starters seem to only help with the mechanical wear and tear of starting the load and the VFD would allow the system to be properly controlled, but would reduce the minimum kWhr draw get us in trouble with the EPA

Basically, is there any way to have energy savings when the EPA regulates the minimum power draw required and when the system operates at this range continuously.

thanks in advance,
chris