community outreach

What Has SJVCEO Been Up to in April

As we wave goodbye to April we  slowly embark into summer and those hot temperatures that are around the corner...which no one is looking forward to. With the beginning of summer and rising temps the SJVCEO team is blazing a trail into its energy saving goals for all three of its areas in 2016.

With the VIEW Partnership the SJVCEO team is working away on energy projects. With organizational change ups with the partnerships IOU partners projects are now beginning to trickle in. A few of the city and county partners in VIEW are taking advantage of the Savings by Design program that the state has to offer. The Savings by Design program was created for building owners to take a whole building or systems approach to energy savings. Instead of completing individual energy efficiency projects owners would take a look with the design team to see what systems or design tweaks the whole building can benefit from. This program is available to customers within California as it is funded by all six IOU's within the state. We are excited to see what savings and projects come out of the Savings by Design collaboration. The VIEW Partnership also was busy with the City of Visalia's Earth Day Event. The partnership always enjoys attending the event to spread the word of energy efficiency and conservation. This year's event was filled with plenty of sunshine and had a great turn out!


Now changing gears to SJVCEO's HDR Partnership. All of our energy partners in the high desert have been hard at work completing well and other large energy saving projects. With the partnership we are happy to now say we are out and about with the message of the energy partnership. Over the last month and a half we have met with most of the Chambers of Commerce in the high desert region and have been welcomed with open arms. We are happy to be sharing information and programs with the chambers in the area, since many of the businesses can benefit.

For our METU program that partners with PG&E we are happy to say that we are full steam ahead on benchmarking and projects. One of our staff members just completed a walk through energy assessment of five facilities within the City of Kingsburg. Our staff member is now crunching the numbers and information to give a full written report about potential projects and energy savings. We will keep you updated on what projects take place.

While we are not busy doing energy assessments and working on energy projects our team participates in a few different advisory councils and organizations. Just this last month one of our staff who works with the San Joaquin Valley Clean Energy Cluster helped with an annual clean energy summit. The summit was a real success and our staff was able to see the great energy work that is happening within the valley. Another one of our staff is working with the Clean Energy Financing Advisory Council. The objective of the council is bring information on new energy efficiency financing opportunities to California. In April the council held a webinar on financing energy storage as well as the CHEEF REEL (Residential Energy Efficiency Loan program) pilot roll-out with Valley Oak Credit Union. A lot of exciting things are happening in the valley as well as in the state so make sure you sty tuned to our blog for updates!
That is all for this month!

SJVCEO Loves Being Out in the Community

Over the last two months SJVCEO and the VIEW Partnership have been out in our hard to reach communities within Tulare and Kings Counties spreading the word of energy efficiency. The Partnership was able to work with our energy champion partners as well as utility partners, PG&E, SCE and SCG, in the cities and counties to bring communities together for an evening of fun and education.
The VIEW Partnership believes that working with our energy champions we can make a difference one house at a time. At our outreach events we find it very valuable to offer  free or low cost flu shots and community resources and not to focus just on energy. With these hard to reach communities residents are not able to have immediate access to all resources that are available to them. So the Partnership is able to bring these items right to their front door. 
This year alone we have added two additional events. In total we were able to have six outreach events. Those six events took place in Visalia, Farmersville, Home Garden, Hardwick, Monson-Sultana and Allensworth. As you can see our events take place all over our two county jurisdiction. I am sure that most people reading this post are not even aware of some of these smaller communities that exist in our Central Valley. 
With these events the Partnership had different means of outreach to households and offered different snacks and refreshment options to the attendees. But the one common thread in each of our outreach events was the involvement of the County Supervisors that represented the area of each event. Having the support of the board of supervisors in our areas means a lot. Knowing that we have someone on board with helping communities find energy savings  is great. We thank them and our energy champions for their support of the VIEW Partnership. We hope to add more community events next year so keep your eyes peeled to see if we will be in your area in 2016. 

What Has SJVCEO Been Up to in September?

The SJVCEO team is happy to officially be in the fall season and be done with the 100+ degree weather here in the valley. With entering into fall our team is also entering into our busy season. Both the VIEW Partnership and Municipal Energy Tune Up (METU) teams have been hard at work to complete projects before the end of the year. 
For the VIEW Partnership our team has been working away on the planning and logistics of the upcoming energy awareness month community events. This year the Partnership is expanding the number of events being held to 6! We are very excited to continue to grow our community outreach events and become more involved in our areas. This year the Partnership will be out in Home Garden, Hardwick, Farmersville, Monson-Sultana and Allensworth areas. If you happen to be in the areas listed come out and enjoy some fun with the family and learn how to save energy. Check out our community outreach calendar to see when these events will be taking place.
As for our METU team, sadly we have shrunk in size due to the loss of two of our Civic Spark members. The Civic Spark members finished their project term with SJVCEO in mid-September. We wish them much success as they continue on their career paths. When it comes to the work of METU several projects that we have assisted with have finally come to fruition and have secured energy savings and plenty of rebates to go along with it!
Four pumps were retrofitted in Kern County to make them more efficient, saving a total of over 215,000 kWh and netting a municipality a rebate check of over $27,000!  The incentives were provided by PG&E, through a third party program called the Advanced Pumping Efficiency Program (APEP), administered by CSU Fresno’s Center for Irrigation Technology.If you own a pump, and are planning on lowering your pump deeper into the ground, get a pump test first.  A simple $200 test (which can be completely subsidized by APEP) may be all it takes to help you offset the cost of lowering the pump with reduced operational costs.  And a pretty nice rebate check too.
Make sure to stay in touch by signing up for our news and program updates here on our blog.


Check in next month to see what we were up to in October!

What Has SJVCEO Been Up to in May

During the month of May SJVCEO has been very busy cracking down on killowatts in our jurisdictions. Each of our programs have been working hard saving local governments, homeowners and businesses energy and money on their electricity bills.

For the VIEW Partnership our team members have been busy planning community outreach events as well as benchmarking away! We have been working on updating all energy data in our online benchmarking system and moving projects through the energy pipeline. We are happy to announce that we are well on our way of meeting our energy saving goal for the year!

Our community outreach events are beginning to take shape for the fall. This year we are planning to have around 4 events during the months of September and October. These events are in the early planning stages and will be announced and shared on our webpage once plans are finalized. The VIEW Partnership is also happy to announce the expansion of our community outreach events. Starting in 2016 the Partnership will be working with SoCal Edison on putting together summer outreach events. We will be looking into partnering with Edison and the local communities for fun summer events as well as cooling centers. We here at VIEW are very excited about our upcoming events. We enjoy being out in the community educated residents on energy efficiency programs that are available to them. 

Our METU program that is working with municipalities in PG&E territory is making great headway. We have just completed benchmarking the City of Fowler and found some savings in both their lighting as well as their HVAC systems.  After we presented our data analysis to the City of San Joaquin we found savings potential in their waster water treatment plant, water wells, lighting and HVAC and are moving those projects forward. We will report the savings back to you once we get the final numbers. Our METU team will be beginning to benchmark the City of Firebaugh the end of this month and hope to have large potential savings in their waste water treatment plants. Our next presentations of our program will be at the Cities of Reedley and Kingsburg.

Since we are part of the EV Partnership here in the San Joaquin Valley we are happy to announce that the Partnership now has a new webpage. Click here to check it out. Make sure to check up on the website since it is loaded with important EV tips and news updated on a regular basis.



Check in next month to see what else we have been up to!