San Joaquin Valley Energy Leader Partnership (VIEW)
PARTNERS MEETING SUMMARY NOTES June 7, 2012 | 10:00 a.m. County of Tulare RMA, RMA Main Conference Room| 5961 South Mooney Blvd., Visalia, CA 93277 Attendees: Barbara Marty, City of Hanford Lew Nelson, City of Tulare Kim Loeb, City of Visalia Gail Henry, County of Tulare Maureen Hoff, SJVCEO
Hammad Chaudhry, SCE Mark Okino, SCE Brian Thoburn, SCE Paulo Morais, So Cal Gas – call in
Location: County of Tulare RMA, Conference Room E, 5961 South Mooney Boulevard, Visalia, CA 93277 Time: 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Next Meeting: Thursday, August 2, 2012 Location: County of Tulare RMA, RMA Main Conference Room, 5961 South Mooney Boulevard, Visalia, CA 93277 SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION Welcome and Introductions Kim Loeb welcomed everyone to the May Partnership meeting. Business Items Maureen Hoff reviewed items and efforts from the last partnership meeting: The the PC power management software webinar is still on delay. Kim reported that Paulo Morais has been in touch with Parsons regarding Visalia’s WWTP Savings by Design project. Hammad Chaudhry has received Direct Install details on number of businesses per city and the types of retrofits per city. He will distribute the results to the partners via email. Maureen and Courtney will schedule a one-day code compliance workshop for late August within VIEW territory. It was clarified that this will be an introductory level meeting for building inspectors, planners, and whoever else jurisdiction partners feel appropriate. Information on current codes, existing compliance, and Title 24 will be included. Once the Gas Company approves the brochure Maureen Hoff will coordinate with vendor to get brochures printed for the second half of 2012. (Paulo later called in to the Partnership meeting and approved the brochure to go to print – see below in summary notes). Municipal energy savings reports from SCE, SCG and SJVCEO. a. SCE: Goal = 4,476,469 kWh and 1,018 kW. To date, goals have been met. b. SCG: Goal = 85,000 therms. To date, Tulare County has 1,500 therms saved. Possible opportunities may exist at the City of Hanford and in various WWTP projects in the region. Kim Loeb added that he felt the therms goal was too optimistic for the Valley and wanted to know if more realistic goals were going to be set for 2013-14 in the Partnership Implementation Plan (PIP). Lew Nelson suggested that solar thermal water heating might be the only way to reach these goals but wasn’t sure where this would be applicable. Gail Henry said she would look again into the potential for gas savings within Tulare County. st
Maureen reported from the June 1 Quarterly Peer to Peer meeting: Discussion continued on how to adjust the method of tracking/counting community savings for ELM tier advancement purposes. SCE has decided that the simplified menu approach going forward is what will
2012 Meeting Schedule: August 2, September 2, October 4, November 1, December 6.
San Joaquin Valley Energy Leader Partnership (VIEW) work best. One outreach event must be completed by a jurisdiction at each level in order to advance. Jurisdictions will be responsible for the event (financing, organizing) as it will not be done through the partnership. Gail Henry added that she will request to see if the partnership can have a presence at the Tulare County Health Fair this fall. Additional discussion at the Peer to Peer meeting included issues with incentive applications. The utilities are working to bring transparency and a better understanding to the way things are currently done and have asked that jurisdictions provide their feedback. Hammad noted that the partnership managers are listening and changes have been made and encouraged discussion. Lew and Gail agreed that it has been a great experience when the utilities can fill out the majority of the incentive application and just get a signature from the city/county. Kim added that the express applications are usually pretty easy but sometimes it is difficult to pick which express item matches the project so the descriptions could use some clarification. Kim suggested a help desk/call center of sorts to help walk people through the process. Lew suggested a searchable list versus a scanned PDF to better help find products. He and Kim agreed that it can be difficult to find products on the list especially when model numbers change and talking to the manufacturer is often not an option. Gail said that it is hard to complain about the incentive application process because she believes that if the County’s EECBG project had gone as planned the process wouldn’t be so difficult. Hammad agreed that the County’s situation was unique. Gail also added that she is concerned about losing the incentive because the process is taking too long and that if someone needs to walk around the building to look at what has been done she can make herself available. Lew shared his story about the incentive application process for a pump project in which he submitted a lump sum for the materials’ cost when the unit price was required. It all worked out in the end, but he did learn that the application process is particular so he will always request unit price moving forward. Kim said that Visalia has had similar challenges. Discussion shifted from the Peer to Peer meeting to the 2013-14 transition planning meetings and followup webinar. Kim said that a lot of other partnerships seemed to want additional trainings for facility managers or similar positions; however, he felt that this probably only works in larger areas because in the VIEW territory we either don’t have the people or the money to send people to attend these types of trainings. Kim did like the idea of the utilities providing project management support or some sort of professional services in any way, shape or form because, again, the smaller jurisdictions often don’t have the staff or budget. Kim also added that the transition planning follow-up webinar could have been more interesting if it was more engaging, but did understand that organizing those things are difficult. Lew agreed and said he couldn’t find the chat button to ask a question. Mark Okino asked the partners if they felt his presence during the 2013-14 transition planning meetings hampered anyone’s feedback. Maureen shared that she believes the VIEW partnership has great relationships between all partners where not all partnerships do, as she has witnessed at the Peer to Peer meetings. Kim agreed and said that he was very comfortable having Mark there but might not have felt that way with Mark’s predecessor. Kim said he felt this partnership had a better understanding of points of contact and knowing who and where to go when needing things. Kim added that it is when there is turnover there is confusion. He and Gail agreed that Hammad and Mark can never leave! Hammad said that ‘operational excellence’ is something Edison is working on. Thinking forward to 2013-14, Hammad added that it looks like the managers have looked at incorporating Direct Install at the municipal level for the future. Municipal Energy Savings SoCalGas No update from SoCalGas on projects.
2012 Meeting Schedule: August 2, September 2, October 4, November 1, December 6.
San Joaquin Valley Energy Leader Partnership (VIEW) SCE Mark Okino presented the SCE project tracking list and explained a few minor changes. The Visalia Convention Center incentive application has been received. Woodlake’s incentive application was also received and Mark planned to pick up a W9 from them after the partnership meeting. Lew reported that Tulare recently had an energy audit by the Industrial Assessment Center in San Francisco and he is anxiously awaiting the report to see if there will be any potential projects. He is thinking that on-site, exterior lighting projects will be on the to-do list. Mark and Hammad clarified that the PLOS projects on the list did go through and that where it says ‘failure’ on the report is just an internal error. Kim asked if anyone else was having issues with their PLOS because Visalia has some that do not work. Hammad said they can replace those that do not work and Mark agreed to come out and replace PLOS with those he has available in his office. Kim added that it can be challenging to feed the cord through a desk because it isn’t long enough so suggested that the manufacturer make them in the future so you could completely detach the cord from the strip. Hammad shared that the County of Kings will need the assistance of the SJVCEO in filling out the incentive application. Maureen will connect with Courtney and Mike Nemeth to ensure this gets done in time. Hammad asked Kim whether or not labor and/or equipment were paid for on the parking lot/convention center lighting project before the application was submitted. Kim and Hammad will discuss offline about sequencing issues. Kim noted that if this project does not work out as planned then Visalia will not participate in the partnership going forward. Maureen updated the partners on the new project tracking system. It will be created using Microsoft Access and is expected to be completed before the August partnership meeting. Similar data to what is currently listed in the project tracking lists will be collected and milestones will be noted throughout the life of a project. Maureen asked for feedback in terms of what kinds of information and reports the partners would like to see, but Kim asked to see a mock up of the tracking system first. Maureen will work with her office IT person to get something to send out to all partners for feedback. Home Energy Efficiency Survey (HEES) Hammad reported on efforts for the upcoming Home Energy Efficiency Survey (HEES) program. The program will come through VIEW territory for a two month period between July and September and once Hammad knows he will report back to partners. The letter developed for the program will be generalized and will not include a signature from individual jurisdictions but rather the VIEW partnership logo. There are too many cities and too many zip codes involved so customization was out of the question. Kim said that he had already received a letter at his home that sounded like it must be the HEES program. Hammad will check to see what this could be – possibly a pilot of the HEES program. Hammad will send out the list of zip codes within the partnership that are included in the mailing. This program will claim about 200 kWh per home that completes the survey. SoCalGas Report from Paulo – via telephone Paulo updated the group on SCG’s efforts for the 2013-14 filing. They are currently in the process of putting in edits to the Partnership Implementation Plans (PIPs) and doing budgets. They will package all of their information nd and submit it to the PUC by July 2 . There will be extra emphasis on coordination with Energy Upgrade California (EUCA), seeking deep retrofits, helping to coordinate some workforce training, and addressing business improvement districts that exist in the region. SCG has received feedback from VIEW partners and others and whittled it down to a list that represents all comments across the joint utility territories. They have been working
2012 Meeting Schedule: August 2, September 2, October 4, November 1, December 6.
San Joaquin Valley Energy Leader Partnership (VIEW) with their electric utility counterparts to take the lead in packaging the information and Paulo assured that it has been a joint effort because SCG shares so much territory with Edison and PG&E. Paulo also noted that based on lessons learned from the past couple of years in terms of therms savings goals, SCG will prorate those down a bit; however, SCG does have ‘under the table’ goals and will route projects through their core programs when possible in order to achieve those goals. Strategic Plan Maureen briefly updated the group with the status of benchmarking efforts. The partnership is currently on track to complete the project by the end of June 2012. Marketing and Outreach Report st Maureen reported that the Partnership had a booth with the second MEU at the June 1 City of Lindsay Friday th th Night Market. Upcoming events include another Lindsay Market on June 29 and the August 9 Hanford Employee Appreciation Night and Market. Paulo approved the new VIEW brochure via telephone. Maureen and Courtney will coordinate with the vendor to get brochures printed for all partners to have for the second half of 2012. Kim asked about the status of the quarterly Marketing and Outreach meetings and if moving forward, when there are items to discuss, if that meeting can be incorporated into the partnership meeting agenda. Hammad and the group agreed that this was okay. Other Business Professional services support was discussed earlier in the meeting. The July Partnership meeting has been cancelled due to Independence Day. The next Partnership meeting will be nd August 2 . The SEEC meeting will take place July 18-19 in Los Angeles. Courtney Kalashian, Maureen, and Kim all plan to attend. Barbara Marty asked about the cost to fly from Visalia to LAX and Kim said he thought it was about $89 each way depending on when you booked. The hotel where the conference will take place has a special rate of $110 per night. Gail will check to see if she can attend. The actual conference is the second day so if you just have one day that would be the day to come. Lew Nelson wanted to share a recent experience in which a handful of SCE representatives made a presentation about a service to review proposals before you sign contracts to make sure savings and other details are feasible. They have a proposal for a big storage battery for fuel cells that would be third party owned and will likely generate a lot of savings. It is a generation project so it won’t work with the partnership, but it does have potential to be worked into a Demand Response program. ACTION ITEMS: Hammad will distribute the results of the detailed Direct Install report to partners via email. The SJVCEO will assist the County of Kings with their lighting project incentive application. Hammad and Kim will discuss offline about sequencing issues with the Visalia project. Hammad will get the official start date of the HEES program and the zip codes within the partnership that will be included in the letter mailing. Maureen will send out a mockup of the new project tracking system to all partners.
2012 Meeting Schedule: August 2, September 2, October 4, November 1, December 6.