Agenda & Presentations

If a speaker name or presentation title is blue, that's a link to a PDF of their presentation.

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

10:00am – 12:00pm 
Pre-Forum Workshop (for Utility and Government Attendees Only)
Session Co-Chairs: Paul Reid, Azusa Light & Water, and Ron Horstman, Western Area Power Administration

Candid roundtable discussion on current issues, including these highest-ranked responses to a recent survey of registrants:

  • What is the value of energy storage for customers, utilities, and the grid?
  • What beyond the meter services are your utility considering?
  • What hurdles are your utility encountering with integrating and managing more energy efficiency in your resource mix?

12:00pm – 1:00pm
Lunch Buffet

12:45pm – 1:00pm
First-timer Orientation and Welcome
Chair: Mark Gosvener, ESG 

1:00pm – 1:30pm
Welcoming Remarks
Mary Medeiros McEnroe, Silicon Valley Power

1:30pm – 2:30pm
Barry MolineOpening Keynote - The 7 Drivers of Change in the Electric Utility Industry and How it Affects You
Barry Moline, Executive Director, California Municipal Utilities Association
Unfortunately, the future won’t wait for us to get our act together and be ready for it. Our organizations must adopt an attitude of constant improvement, examining new opportunities to serve our customers in ways that improve service and control costs. We’ll discuss the 7 drivers of change – whether we like them or not – that are forcing our utilities to re-examine how we conduct business and interact with our customers. 

2:30pm – 3:00pm 
Networking Break and Energy Quiz hosted by ESG
Quiz Emcee: Graham Parker, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

3:00pm – 4:30pm
Strategic/Policy View
Session Co-Chairs:  Dave Ashuckian, California Energy Commission, and Bryan Cope, Southern California Public Power Authority

4:30pm – 5:15pm
Meet the Exhibitors
Session Co-Chairs: Dennis Guido, Staples & Associates and Mark Gosvener, ESG

Get to know the Forum exhibitors in this lightning round of conversation starters designer to help you better network and learn

5:15pm 
Adjourn

5:15pm – 6:15pm 
Reception

6:30pm 
Dinner hosted by RHA

8:00pm 
Networking Campfire hosted by Embertec
Unwind at a casual gathering around the fire ring to reflect on the day's discussion and look ahead to tomorrow.

Thursday, May 4, 2017

7:30am – 8:30am 
Breakfast Buffet

8:30am – 10:00am
Electric Vehicles 
Session Co-Chairs: Mary Medeiros McEnroe, Silicon Valley Power, and Dan Kay, Lewis County PUD

10:00am – 10:30am
Networking Break with Energy Quiz hosted by ESG
Quiz Emcee: Graham Parker, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

10:30am – 12:00pm 
Customer View
Session Co-Chairs: Moses Gastelum, PG&E and Vanessa Lara, Merced Irrigation District

12:00pm – 1:00pm 
Lunch Buffet

1:00pm – 2:00pm
Cole RobertsMidpoint Keynote - A Crisis of Building Efficiency – Drivers of Change in Energy
Cole Roberts, Associate Principal - Energy & Resource Sustainabilty at Arup
We are in a moment of great change and the human induced future is unfolding at an increasingly rapid pace.  At best, we are at risk of not meeting our potential.  At worst, we are working against our goals of and losing ground in performance at the system scale.  It is becoming clear that the greatest opportunity for breaking out of the diminishing returns of efficiency is to think beyond the building scale, beyond individual systems, beyond the current climate, and beyond our own behavior.  In his talk, Cole will draw on insights from long term planning, psychology research, climate science, energy policy, integrated technology, the future of construction, and on the ground work on the optimum scale of systems.  He will make the case that we are on the verge of great success, but only if synergy increasingly trumps efficiency.

2:00pm – 3:30pm 
Technology View – Part I
Session Co-Chairs: ​Jennifer McMaster, Bonneville Power Administration, and Christopher Dymond, Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance

3:30pm – 3:45pm 
Networking Break and Energy Quiz hosted by ESG
Quiz Emcee: Graham Parker, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

3:45pm – 5:15pm 
Utility Program Stand-up Challenge
Session Co-Chairs: Cheri Davis, Sacramento Municipal Utility District and David Reynolds, ERS
Join us for the craziest round of concurrent sessions ever! Imagine speed dating meets the lightning round of a TV game show! Visit up to 6 storyboards detailing utility-sponsored energy programs or research. Each storyboard presenter has up to 5 minutes (plus up to 7 minutes for Q&A) to share with you the program’s goals, successes and lessons learned. A bell rings, you choose another storyboard, and the 12-minute clock starts again.  Due to limited space, we will break this year’s event up into two segments, with a short intermission to set up new storyboards at the midpoint.

-- Serving Your Commercial Food Service Customers: Partnerships, Tools and StrategiesRichard Young, Director of Education, PG&E Food Service Technology Center / fishnick. Commercial food service operations are energy-intensive, demand-driven, operations that have been under-served by California's municipal utilities because no one knew where to start or why this customer segment mattered. The California Energy Wise IOU food service program is now partnering with non-IOU utilities to lend a helping hand and the food service educators at fishnick have launched an on-line on-demand training program that can bring workforce education and training to this diverse and difficult commercial segment. Learn how these partnerships and tools can help you serve your commercial food service customers.

-- Home Water Reports - saving water and peak demand?Kapil Kulkarni, Burbank Water and Power, Marketing Associate. Learn how Burbank Water and Power teamed up with a gas utility to encourage conservation of water, electricity, and gas – all at the same time – using Home Water Reports.  BWP's project partners included a software vendor to provide the reports, the local gas and water utilities to share resource savings and costs, and a top-notch research university to validate the results. This project demonstrates that how utilities can form partnerships with unobvious organizations in order to meet sustainability mandates regarding water use, demand side management, greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

-- Smooth Landing for Residential Net Zero: The Roseville Electric Perspective - Mark Riffey, Program Manager, Roseville Electric and  Sophia Hartkopf, TRC Energy Services. Roseville Electric recently revamped their residential new construction program, formerly known as Best Home. This poster will review the new ZNE-ready program design, including escalating incentives based on the homes' HERS score and bonus incentives for high savings design features such as, high performance walls and attics and whole house fans. Ultimately, the program aims to support homebuilders in embracing high cutting edge high performance design practices and preparing for forthcoming Title 24 and CalGREEN energy standards updates.

-- How the Number One Texas Municipal Energy Company Values Retro-commissioning Bob Nelson, CPS Energy and Angel Moreno, Frontier Associates. Utility CPS Energy and Frontier Associates share their experiences implementing and verifying performance of commercial building retro-commissioning (RCx) projects. CPS Energy offers incentives to customers to encourage them to implement RCx projects. Due to the nature of retro-commissioning, every project is unique and presents distinct challenges in how to estimate and verify energy and cost savings. Presenters will provide lessons learned from conducting measurement and verification (M&V) of energy savings in order to help determine cost-effective incentives for customers.

-- Residential Window Coverings: Do they Save Energy or Just Look Nice?Katie Cort, PNNL. Energy efficiency program managers are continually seeking new and demonstrated technologies for achieving measurable energy and demand savings. Though window coverings and attachments have traditionally been thought of as decorative features in the home, new shading materials and control strategies are demonstrating significant energy savings. This poster presentation will feature some of the latest whole home experimental research related to energy-efficient window coverings and attachments, including optimal and dynamic control strategies for operable shading devices to ensure persistent energy savings.  Information will also be presented on the newly launched Attachment Energy Rating Council (AERC) and its work to develop energy ratings, certifications, and labels for energy-efficient window attachment products.

-- Residential Plug Load Growth Getting You Down?  It’s time to CHEER up! Stephen Bickel, D+R International and Alex Araiza, SMUD. The Coalition for Home Electronics Energy Reduction, or CHEER, is a collaboration between D+R International, SMUD, EE Program Administrators and regional organizations, manufacturers, service providers, and advocates. The first CHEER initiative aims to cut U.S. home entertainment energy consumption by 10 TWh/yr by 2020, through Tier2 AV Advanced Powerstrips that will be installed by Pay-TV technicians at time of usual customer visit.  Ten terawatt hours of annual savings will require installing a Tier 2 AV APS in half of pay-TV customer households nationwide. Attend this session to learn about how D+R and SMUD’s pilot program with Embertec, TrickleStar, and Pay-TV providers is progressing in Sacramento, and how your utility can do the same.

-- Best Practices in Trade Pro Networks – Nathan Baer, Staples Energy & Jeff McDowell, PG&E. Contractors or Trade Pros play a vital role in the delivery of energy efficiency programs by offering expansive geographic coverage, technical expertise and local market knowledge. However, Trade Pro or Trade Ally delivery models come with their own challenges including communication, quality, customer service, and overall delivery consistency. Representatives from PG&E and Staples & Associates will discuss the “dos and don’ts” of the Trade Pro model based on experience in California, Illinois and Wisconsin. This presentation will provide great insight as well as real-world, take home practices for utilities looking to offer a Trade Pro model.

-- Energy Education Coming to a Computer Screen Near You! Roger Ebbage, Lane Community College and Rob Currier, Emerald People’s Utility District.  Lane Community College has been awarded a National Science Foundation grant to move their nationally recognized Commercial Building Energy Management program online. This provides an opportunity for utilities to help develop their future workforce. To be successful, the Energy Program needs the help of utility energy efficiency experts to serve as Fieldwork Mentors for individual students who take our online energy courses. Fieldwork Mentors will assist students with specific course activities such as light source identification, HVAC system tour & analysis, and residential auditing. Come to this session to learn more about the online program and how your utility can provide Fieldwork Mentors to help train the new workforce.

-- AB 802 Benchmarking - Improved Energy Efficiency through Public Disclosure of Building Performance Laith Younis, California Energy Commission.  In 2018, the California Energy Commission will launch a mandatory benchmarking and public disclosure program for 40,000 large commercial and residential buildings in California. Attend this session to learn how Assembly Bill 802 ensured access to the whole-building energy use data that makes this program possible, the choices Energy Commission staff made in proposing regulations to implement the program, how utilities are preparing to provide building-level energy use data to building owners and their agents on request, and how the Energy Commission will coordinate with local jurisdictions on benchmarking programs. The presentation will also include examples of the Energy Commission's vision for displaying building performance information that can be used by policy makers, researchers, business owners, and the general public.

-- The Troubled Story of a Heat Pump Water Heater Pilot Program -- Hiromi Kelty, City of Palo Alto Utilities, Utility Program Manager. The California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB32) requires the state to reduce its Greenhouse Gas emissions to 20% below 1990 levels by 2020, and set an aspirational goal to reduce emissions 80% by 2050. The City of Palo Alto Utilities (CPAU) set an even more aggressive goal of reducing GHG emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2030 (“80x30”). One way we hope to achieve this decarbonization target is through electrification. As a first step, CPAU launched a Heat Pump Water Heater Pilot Program in April 2016.  Given CPAU’s low electric rates and a generous rebate of up to $1,500, expectations for customer participation in this program were high.  However, to date, only 2 residents have completed installations.  What happened? With low gas prices and many obstacles to installation, how cost effective is decarbonization of customer end uses? Hear the lessons that CPAU has learned, along with its future plans for electrification initiatives.

5:15pm – 6:15pm 
Reception

6:30pm 
Dinner

8:00pm
"Any Port in a Storm” Wine Tasting

Friday, May 5, 2017

7:30am – 8:30am
Breakfast Buffet

9:00am – 10:15am
Technology View – Part II
Session Co-Chairs: ​Jennifer McMaster, Bonneville Power Administration, and Christopher Dymond, Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance

10:15am – 10:30am 
Networking Break with Energy Quiz hosted by ESG
Quiz Emcee: Graham Parker, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

10:30am – 12:00pm
Utility Programs Snapshot
Session Co-Chairs: ​Kevin Palmer, Riverside Utilities, and Adrianne Rogers, City of Colton Electric Utility

12:00pm
Adjourn

12:00pm – 1:00pm
Lunch buffet