07 17 2014 view summary notes

San Joaquin Valley Energy Leader Partnership (VIEW)

PARTNERS MEETING SUMMARY NOTES July 17, 2014 | 9:30 – 11:30 a.m.

Attendees: Joseph Carlini, City of Tulare Gail Henry, County of Tulare Dave Christensen, PG&E Courtney Kalashian, SJVCEO Kuyler Crocker, PG&E Mario Krstic, City of Farmersville Bob Decker, SCG Kimball Loeb, City of Visalia Michael DeSousa, SCE Rhonda Mann, County of Kings Samantha Dodero, SJVCEO Zandrea Rox, SJVCEO Sarah Farell, SJVCEO

Location: Tulare County Government Plaza, RMA Conference Room Time: 9:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

Next Meeting: No August Meeting; next meeting on September 18th at 9:30 a.m.

SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION

Welcome & Introductions Courtney welcomed the group and introductions were made.

Partnership Business SJVCEO Staff Updates The SJVCEO has hired four new people, three of which will be helping with the VIEW Partnership. Sarah is moving to Seattle but will continue working full-­‐time for the organization on policy pieces. Samantha Dodero will start with SJVCEO August 1st as the Marketing and Outreach Coordinator, Zandrea Rox started June 18th as a Project Analyst to provide technical assistance to the local governments, and Jose Reyes has been working with the organization part-­‐time to assist with finances and billing. Jarred Olsen, previously with the Fresno EDC, also started with the SJVCEO on June 18th as a Project Analyst for a new non-­‐VIEW contract with PG&E to benchmark all local governments in the eight-­‐county SJV. Eventually, Readiness Reports and Advanced Technical Assistance will be part of Jarred’s work along with that of a to-­‐be-­‐hired addition to the SJVCEO team.

SCE Staff Updates Mark Okino will be out for the rest of this year. Chris Coronel will be filling in. Zandy and the rest of the SJVCEO team will help pick up any slack that is a result of Mark’s absence. Matt Garcia from SCE is aware of the situation and it will be monitored.

2014 Meeting Schedule Update No VIEW Partnership meeting in August. Meetings will be held from 9:30a.m. – 11:30a.m. at the Tulare County Government Plaza in September through November unless otherwise stated. There will be no December meeting as it is too close to the holidays.

VIEW the Success! 01/15/15 Save the Date! Lief Christiansen, Greg Haney and Frank Spisaro will all be in attendance. Save the Dates will be sent out in October and November and invites will go out the first week of January. Kuyler to spread the word about the luncheon around to the Kings County cities.

SEEC Conference Report Back The plan for 2015 is still confusing; there is no decision yet. Commissioner Florio was there and he seemed engaged and enthusiastic about the local government work. Jeremy Battis, also from the CPUC, is encouraged by the VIEW Partnership model. Bob mentioned that within SCG, there’s a heightened level of scrutiny among the various engineers dealing with EM&V projects.

There are currently concerns and discrepancies about money spent and saved, project time, etc. but this may be flushed out in the 10 year cycle. The CPUC is running two EM&C studies (LGPs and Strategic Planning Energy Resources) to help resolve this. Funding won’t go away, but it may be moved around.

For example, benchmarking falls under Strategic Planning, but is really Direct Implementation. There will be a fight to maintain the existence of the energy leader model. The slate may be wiped clean or there may be modifications. There are different ways to implement Energy Leader Partnerships across the three utilities. SCE is currently doing a self-­‐evaluation of the Energy Leader Model and the CPUC is doing one of SCE’s ELM as well.

Project Updates

PG&E Staples Report for May and June 2014 Staples must be closed and done by the end of December – the company closed the last two weeks of the year. Staples still has some money to spend between now and then. If any cities have any projects coming up, Staples will be happy to do an evaluation. Gail mentioned that SCE sent a list of facilities that qualify for Direct Install. PG&E can do the same: Cam is currently on vacation, but Kuyler can do this.

SCE Direct Install Report Back There will be a reduced DI list after July. PG&E’s DI program now has a copay. The customer is responsible for only 10-­‐20% of the project cost. Sarah and Zandy will do benchmarking for Tulare County. There will be a meeting about this close to the end of the year. Gail asked if SCE’s DI program gave the Partnership credits, but it does not. Courtney said that the Partnership is still counting those savings through DI for the CPUC, though. The CPUC likes to see these numbers. Michael cannot see numbers either until the installation process is complete and they are inputted into the CRM system. Mario from Farmersville mentioned that they got an initial evaluation for lighting, but no one ever showed up for the installation process. The window tinting DI projects (accounting for $3K) went well and have been completed, but the lighting (a contract for $23K) still has

not been done. Rhonda said her lighting projects were done by Dave’s Lighting. They set up a time to do the projects one week out, but continued to receive the wrong fax number for them. The process to set up a time for the lighting projects to be completed took a long time, but they did a good job. Gail said that some people came without notice to Tulare County.

Kim said that the communication and coordination between subcontractor and customer was nonexistent. The window tinting people came to the City of Visalia completely out of the blue. There was no management of the subcontractors. In fact, one of the CRI installers kept calling the City Manager of Visalia to set up installation appointments, to notify someone that he’d be late when his truck broke down, etc. When CRI works with a small business, the owner – highest person on the totem pole – is the person who should be aware and in control of the evaluation and installation process on the customer side, but this is not how it works in municipalities. The subcontractors also could not do the lighting retrofits in the fire stations because they didn’t bring any lifts; no one was talking to each other about this. SJVCEO will help get those new lights into the following fire stations: 2224 W Monty Vista and 440 W Ferguson. Another project in Visalia that couldn’t be completed was the replacement of 230 T12s in the hangers. High output T8s were not available through SCE’s DI program, and so this project got pulled. Kim finished his comments by saying that the coordination for the program finally worked out well, but it was a challenge and there is now a lot of bad will from the City of Visalia’s facilities – especially towards the Conservation Department. Once CRI was in and installing, it was good, but the coordination and project management was lacking. CRI needs to take lifts to the aforementioned fire stations; coordinate with Nathan Garza for those.

Courtney mentioned that the contractors hired for PG&E’s DI program know how to work with municipalities. SCE should have training for contractors. If there aren’t good contractors available or the municipalities have a bad experience with the contractors, the individual facilities or the municipality as a whole will never let subcontractors back in to do anything. Can the Partnership or SJVCEO help coordinate? SJVCEO can be the traffic director especially because this is likely not the last of SCE’s DI program, which is a good thing, but it needs to run much more smoothly. SJVCEO will take this issue to the Peer to Peer group and SCE because there wasn’t just a single incident. Suggestions were made to use Staples as the contractor (they also have an open contract) and to make SCE’s DI program a hybrid program like PG&E’s. Michael mentioned that he has tried to push for Staples, but nothing has come of it. CRI should not be the contractor in the Valley; consider getting FESS to do it since they did well in the SJV with SMB. SCE needs to pull best practices from all vendors to help build a smoother running program.

SCE Projects: Pipeline and Current A hybrid program would likely get the Partnership credits for savings.

One of PG&E’s third party programs, Ecology Action, has a hybrid program that can do customized measured with a pseudo deemed approach so there are no pre and post inspections. Visalia has a project working with the Energy Network. Kim has been working on this with Doug and so far it’s been fine. Visalia will be bringing in all the savings for the REN since they have no other substantial projects that are doing well anywhere else. The REN is processing incentive applications for the City of Visalia,

but the SJVCEO can do this, too. Some of Visalia’s projects are not through the REN. This includes the park projects and others are getting pushed back to August for completion instead of July.

Joe from the City of Tulare wanted to have a complete project description for his City from SCE. Michael to look in CRM for this by Monday. Joe needs to talk about the WWTP and the consequential production of biogas, which is currently going to fuel cells. He needs to work with SCE and SCG about this. Bob Decker said he’d put Joe into contact with the right person and will make some connections to people in California City about other options with biogas. Michael will follow up about this with Matt Garcia (and perhaps Chris Coronel). Kim mentioned that the cities can’t sell extra energy. The grid wasn’t designed to accept huge fluctuations in power. There are two SCE guys – one in Ventura and one in Mojave – who understand the tariffs associated with biogas production. Joe should meet with them.

SCG Projects: Pipeline and Current The County of Tulare detention facility submitted an application through SCE because Savings by Design doesn’t have savings for it. SCE and PG&E do Savings by Design and SCG takes a back seat because there aren’t always gas savings associated with these projects. Gail to call Charlie and ask about gas at this facility.

Title 24 hasn’t had a huge impact on the gas side, and so there should be opportunities at the detention facility in Tulare County.

Looking at DI program, Bob is struggling to find measures that are cost effective enough to fall under DI. Hopefully we will see this come to fruition by the 10 year cycle. There’s more and more talk about water conservation. EE opportunities can tie back to pumping if anyone is thinking of substantial gas projects.

Partners should start talking about this as soon as possible because it’s ever-­‐changing and nothing good has come out of a discussion about incentives and the paperwork process is getting bigger.

Marketing & Outreach

ELP Community Menu Items for Farmersville, Woodlake and Visalia SJVCEO will help get these done as soon as possible. Courtney will come out to Rhonda to help with a submission of a write up about community items and events. Courtney recommends Partners do council presentation of municipal success stories – it’s easy and SJVCEO can help. Farmersville, Woodlake and Visalia are all on the verge of moving up and can get new tier level done in next two months to count for next quarter. Kim wants to do a municipal success story for the City of Visalia and Mario will let the SJVCEO know.

October “Energy Awareness Month” Events There will be 10 events in 31 days and Partners will primarily work with Samantha on this. During the first week in October, the PG&E/SCG county events will be held in Kettleman City (Kings) and Alpaugh (Tulare). Flu shots will be offered again and it will be highlighting County services not just VIEW. SCE/SCG will host the remaining events in the Cities; Partners should think of an underserved neighborhood that would greatly benefit from a similar event (identify an area and time that will be best as soon as possible). For these events, we will bring out Proteus, Staples, etc. and enroll as many people as we can. We will raffle off LED Christmas trees again. The

counties may be able to bring flu shots to these events as well and, again, these events will highlight energy savings and city programs.

If the Counties want a SCE/SCG sponsored event, SJVCEO can attend county fairs, but there is not enough budget to build another specific event. Local hospitals should be considered for flu shots. The giveaways at the City events will be for human needs (toothbrushes and similar items). We will ask Proteus which neighborhoods would most benefit from these events. These events will be good for elected because they are being held right before elections.

“Battle of the Buildings” Volunteers Sarah will send out an email about this to all Partners.

Website Update and Toolkits Courtney will send out more information about this to keep in line with the remaining time available.

Other Business

Scheduling Assessment Meetings for August SJVCEO and the utilities will be meeting with all VIEW Partners individually to have a needs assessment meeting. Farmersville would like to have theirs in August, but all other jurisdictions would like to wait for the fall.

Demand Response 101, September 11, Tulare Holly Merrihew from SCE is hosting a DR informational session at the Tulare Education Center. Please attend. This will include an update on AB1103, which has pushed back the deadline for benchmarking facilities under 10,000 square feet to July 2016. All facilities over 10,000 square feet should have already been completed.

Next Regular Meeting will be held on September 18th. No meeting in August.

Adjourn Meeting

ACTION ITEMS 1. Kuyler to spread the word about the VIEW! the Success luncheon around Kings County cities 2. PG&E to send a list of facilities that qualify for its DI program 3. Zandy and Sarah to work with Gail on benchmarking Tulare County facilities 4. SJVCEO coordinate lifts to Visalia fire stations so DI light installation can take place 5. SCE to start training DI contractors and they should pull best practices from DI vendors 6. Michael to look in CRM for list of City of Tulare projects for Joe 7. Bob to put Joe in contact with the right SCG person to discuss the WWTP and biogas production 8. Courtney to help Rhonda with submission of community item 9. VIEW to ask Proteus which neighborhoods in the VIEW cities should the community outreach events take place 10. Sarah to send out email about Battle of the Buildings and Courtney to disperse information on toolkits