Customer Energy Solutions
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Hondeydew Elementary School 4.8 kW Solar Array, one of RCEA’s Public Agency Solar Projects
I am excited to join the RCEA Demand Side Management (DSM) Team. The DSM Team navigated 2020’s many challenges and accomplished much. We are closing out the Energy Watch program after 15 years of providing energy efficiency services to the Humboldt Community. In its final year alone, RCEA completed over 223 customer projects through Energy Watch. The Energy Watch work will carry on in our new Local Government Partnership collaboration with PG&E. This program will serve public, commercial, and residential customers with a wide array of energy solutions including no-cost assessments, connecting customers to third-party providers of energy upgrades, and full Trusted Energy Advisor services for our government partners, which in turn will help them serve their constituents more efficiently. RCEA’s new Program Administrator status with the California Public Utilities Commission has secured an additional $1.8 million in program funding for Humboldt County over the next three years. These programs will focus on efficiency upgrade incentives and energy efficient product
rebates. Programs will be available to public, commercial, and residential customers and will be announced early in 2021. We are especially excited to be developing a new catalog of direct-to-customer rebates for energy efficient product purchases that will help us connect customers to the best rebates for their situation.
outages, these battery systems will help the California energy grid transition to even more renewable energy by leveling the curve, or allowing renewable energy to be shifted from when it is produced to when it is used. We are also working on an added incentive for storage to be a part of a large, grid-connected virtual power plant.
The DSM Team has also kept very busy assisting local schools, public safety agencies, and government partners with a variety of services including securing over $3 million in grants and no/low interest loans for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. Over the past five years, RCEA has assisted 22 school districts with Proposition 39 funded projects, ranging from lighting, controls, refrigeration, HVAC, fuel substitution, hot water, building envelopes, plug loads, and solar PV.
By being your Community Choice Energy provider, RCEA has also been able to develop and implement local CCE-funded programs. These include providing over 250 residential energy consultations and 90 residential energy efficiency kits last year at no charge to the customer. We will be launching a variety of new programs in 2021, including programs for Mobile Home Solar, Grocery Refrigeration, Green Your Grow, and Heat Pump Rebates.
Through California’s Self Generation Incentive Program, the DSM team helped the Humboldt community secure over $43 million in incentives for backup battery installations. Besides providing much-needed resiliency in case of power
GOALS for Customer Energy Solutions Support the wide-spread installation of customer solar energy systems, with a target to increase installations to a rate of one system every day for the next decade and reach 30 MW of customer solar installed by 2025 and 50 MW installed by 2030. Make energy efficiency and conservation services available to every household and business in the county by 2030. Expand existing energy efficiency, conservation and electrification programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel use in buildings by 20% by 2030 and maintain a trajectory to reduce emissions from natural gas by 90% by 2050.
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NORTH COAST JOURNAL • SPECIAL PULL-OUT SECTION • Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021 • redwoodenergy.org
All of us at RCEA look forward to serving our community for a brighter, more energy-efficient future!”
Stephen Kullmann
Director, Customer Energy Solutions
Stephen joined the RCEA team as our newest department director in May of 2020. A graduate of Humboldt State University, Stephen comes to us most recently from the Blue Lake Rancheria, where as the Community Development and Resilience Director he partnered with RCEA on energy and transportation projects as well as other infrastructure development projects. Stephen also serves as a Commissioner for the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation, and Conservation District.
