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HomeMy WebLinkAboutEnergy Board - Minutes - 04/13/2023 ENERGY BOARD April 13, 2023 – 5:30 pm 222 Laporte Ave – Colorado Room ROLL CALL Board Members Present: Bill Althouse, Marge Moore, Jeremy Giovando, Brian Smith, Thomas Loran (remote), Alan Braslau, Steve Tenbrink, Vanessa Paul Board Members Absent: Bill Becker OTHERS PRESENT Staff Members Present: Christie Fredrickson, Phillip Amaya, Rhonda Gatzke, Brian Tholl, Cyril Vidergar (remote), John Phelan Members of the Public: MEETING CALLED TO ORDER Chairperson Tenbrink called the meeting to order at 5:30 pm. ANNOUNCEMENTS & AGENDA CHANGES None. PUBLIC COMMENT None. APPROVAL OF MINUTES In preparation for the meeting, board members submitted amendments via email for the March 9, 2023, minutes. The minutes were approved as amended. STAFF REPORTS Federal & State Funding Update John Phelan, Energy Services Manager & Energy Policy Advisor The City has hired two consultant companies to assist with grant researching and writing. Light and Power (L&P) has contracted with StanTec, and the water utilities have contracted with TetraTech. Mr. Phelan reminded the Energy Board of their advisory role to City Council. The Board can offer refinement and feedback on staff strategies for funding opportunities, but they should stay within policy initiatives framed first by City Council or staff. The Board can be informed by but cannot direct or advise StanTec efforts or provide direction on funding opportunities. Mr. Amaya added that grant writing affects everyone, so staff do want the Board’s input and refinement; we may not be able to do everything, but he wants to make sure staff and the Board coalesce around what makes the most sense. There is an enormous spread of opportunities, so staff’s priorities in seeking funding are centered around the goals of Our Climate Future, specifically Big Move 6 (Efficient, Emissions Free Buildings), Big Move 12 (100% Renewable Electricity) and Big Move 13 (Electric Cars and Fleet). Additionally, within L&P, staff will be seeking funding opportunities for distribution system planning, visibility, control, ENERGY BOARD REGULAR MEETING assets, cybersecurity, and resilience. Within Energy Services, they’ll be seeking opportunities focused on customer resources, industry development, and resilience. Staff will be leaning on research and information sources to help secure funding and through several channels, including Stantec and a Grant Coordinator (a City employee). Federal funding may be available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), also known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). IIJA primarily contains grants, loans, consulting, and research focused on infrastructure, resilience, and emissions. The IRA contains a combination of funding for states, grants, loans, consulting, and tax incentives. All proposals need to align with the Justice 40 Initiative goals (an initiative to confront and address decades of underinvestment in disadvantaged communities by directing 40% of the funding to these communities) and each proposal requires a community benefits plan. Many of the programs have multiple funding cycles, and while IIJA funding is more likely to flow directly to the City, IRA funding will likely flow through the state (primarily through the Colorado Energy Office). Mr. Phelan noted that the tax rules are critical for many opportunities, but the details are lagging. Across all funding opportunities, StanTec will be looking to identify programs, links, funding types, agencies, purpose/goals, and many other factors, all of which will help staff and prioritize. Mr. Phelan discussed a few opportunities currently in progress. Staff submitted a grant application in the beginning of March for RECI (Resilient and Efficient Codes Implementation), which provides approximately $1 million toward a project implementing performance-based energy codes in Fort Collins, and to draft a national zero carbon code appendix to go in the IECC. This is a five-year process covering two code cycles. The City is partnering with New Buildings Institute (NBI), Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC), International Code Council (ICC) and Colorado Energy Office (CEO). The Electric Vehicle Fleet Charging Management program is being led by Transfort with partners in Operations Services, Utilities, and in collaboration with Panasonic. Award negotiations are currently underway. . The City received an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) formula award, and the funding will likely be directed to Operations Services for facility upgrades. Board member Paul asked if there are concerns about new affordable housing and how these programs and codes will affect that? Mr. Phelan said yes, the concerns are being heard; he noted that nationally we have seen that it doesn’t cost a lot more to build a very high performing building, but it is not always easy due to inertia in the industry. Board member Braslau asked if Utilities could take the lead to explain this point to City Council, the Affordable Housing Board and the Housing Catalyst as well as other concerned partners. The city is also actively interested in several upcoming opportunities: Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP), Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (via Environmental Protection Agency), Collaborating with CEO and Colorado Clean Energy Fund (CCEF), Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Grants (Community Charging), Through Department of Transportation (DOT), Colorado EV funding: Charge Ahead grants, EV public charging planning grants (with FC Moves), and Public Buildings Electrification: via the state, by Operations Services. Board member Braslau asked if there are any opportunities where Utilities could play a role in both developing and promoting public electric vehicle charging at businesses? Mr. Phelan said charging grants are a great option already for business customers, but there is much more to do. ENERGY BOARD REGULAR MEETING Board member Smith asked if the funding opportunities are mapped back to the primary goals of Our Climate Future. Mr. Phelan said no, the funding is not specifically mapped, but they will help all of the pathways become more feasible. The solutions range across multiple boundaries and chains of command. Mr. Smith asked how staff determine what opportunities are aligning with what goals. Mr. Amaya said the Utility does not want to go after every grant, staff wants to target the ones that make the most sense. Mr. Phelan added that not every opportunity staff pursues can be directly traced to a climate mitigation goal. There are needs the Utility has with infrastructure which bolsters the Utility’s resilience. He also pointed out that grants are not the only funding opportunities and staff needs to also consider what resources are already available; the end goal is to reduce the pressure on the rate payer. Board member Althouse said the Utility absolutely must evaluate how spending will impact rates. Staff should compare Virtual Power Plants and Distributed Energy Resource accelerators; an economic impact analysis must be done. There does not appear to be any data that will let us project what we will spend through Platte River. He wants to know if we change the goal from 5% local renewable resources to 20%, what would be the impact to the rate, how much less will the Utility be purchasing from Platte River, how much less does Platte River invest and charge back the community. He added that we have to heal a rift between our business community and our environmental community. Board member Paul said it feels like staff often come to the Board to educate them on what they do on a day-to-day basis, and she does not feel like that’s the best utilization of the Energy Board. She wants staff to come to the Board with problems staff need help with. Ms. Fredrickson noted that technically all direction needs to either come directly from, or trickle down from City Council through staff, because the Energy Board is a City Council advisory board and does not hold any quasi-judicial authority. Chairperson Tenbrink said Council has never directly engaged him, asking for guidance. Ms. Fredrickson asked the board to consider how much they have engaged Council or their Council Liaison (Councilmember Canonico) asked the Board. Board member Braslau added that the Board should be bringing community issues to the attention of City Council and specifically Councilmember Canonico. Board member Paul asked staff to please come with clearer direction and/or tangible actions on how the Board can support staff initiatives through City Council. Board member Giovando said he is personally not interested in discussing grants, but he is interested in understanding if any of the grant opportunities are tied to having a specific policy in place, and therefore as a Board they need to take action in removing barriers and/or supporting a policy change to be able to obtain that funding. Mr. Phelan said staff presented a Climate Action roadmap to City Council in October, which contains specific actions and results that must be in place to achieve some of the outcomes of OCF. Some will be controversial and will require some political will, but these are the steps necessary to achieve the goals. Staff asked the Board to consider what they would like to get out of their work session, whether that is funding related or an alternate topic, and to send that feedback to Chairperson Tenbrink. TRANSFORMER LOAD SHAPING ANALYSIS Brian Tholl, Energy Services Supervisor This project was completed to explore a few questions brought up by both the contractor and residential communities while the City works toward electrifying buildings in the community. Staff identified a few key findings through their studies. Winter peak demands associated with electrically heated homes are smaller than previously anticipated. In single family detached homes, electrically heated homes have about 5 kW higher winter peak day loads than similar non-electrically heated homes, and in multifamily ENERGY BOARD REGULAR MEETING homes, electrically heated homes have about 4 kW higher winter peak day loads than similar non- electrically heated homes. Homes with high performance envelopes and ground source heat pumps also have substantially lower loads, confirming the importance of weatherization for the existing building stock. Mr. Tholl explained the intent of the study was to bookend the best- and worst-case scenarios for electric heated homes and can be an input for the Utility’s distribution planning and sizing considerations for future development. Staff’s modeling approach was to develop and identify target a comparison group of transformers for sampling. Staff worked with a third party analytics vendor and processed, transformed, and aggregated AMI data. For each premise, the data was evaluated in 15-minute, hourly, 2-hourly, and 6-hourly periods. For each transformer and each strata, the vendor added up the 15-minute, hourly, 2-hourly, and 6-hourly data. Staff estimated the distribution of loads on each of the equipment pieces by day, hour of day, and an average daily temperature, and then for each aggregation and time horizon the maximum load, minimum load, and distribution of loads was calculated. Additionally, the distributions in each neighborhood were compared to the distributions of the comparison group to estimate the difference in typical loads for all-electric homes versus homes with gas. Generally, Mr. Tholl said staff found maximum loads (winter) of around 10kW in electrically heated single- family premises. Compared to non-electric heat transformers, there was about 5kW difference, which is lower than overall anticipated. Staff were also interested in summertime loading and found that in electrically heated homes reached a maximum load of around 7kW (compared to ~5kW in non-electric homes). Even though these homes are not heating in the summer months, they are likely also electrically heating their water, have electric ranges, etc. (rather than natural gas). Mr. Tholl displayed a graph plotted with a 2021 annual load comparison of electric and non-electric heated single-family premises. In February 2021, Winter Storm Uri brought historic cold temperatures to Northern Colorado, so staff can use these data points for load planning purposes. Electric heat homes showed about a 5kW difference from non-electric heat homes. Mr. Tholl pointed out that a high performing home envelope with ground source heat pump during Winter Storm Uri (where there is very little solar and wind generation) had electric loads comparable to homes with natural gas heating loads. Chairperson Tenbrink noted that ground source heat pumps are extremely expensive and is trying to understand the impact if people come off electric heat and move toward air-source heat pumps. He wondered if the City is planning for that type of scenario. Board member Braslau said that is highly dependent on the market, because in Europe ground source heat pumps are very competitively priced. Board member Paul asked if staff are utilizing this data to do a financial comparison year over year in single and multifamily homes. Mr. Tholl said this year staff is working on a tool that will help customers with that very thing, but noted it is a sensitive and complex process due to the Utility’s time of day rate structure. Without that tool it is difficult for the Energy Advisors to give a clear picture. Board member Moore asked about panel size upgrades (200 amp to 400 amp) with retrofitted homes. Mr. Phelan said most homes should be able to go to an all-electric home with electric vehicle charging with a standard 200-amp panel. Board member Smith asked what the average size homes and occupancy rates are and does that translate easily across the footprint. Mr. Phelan said this study was designed more to look at the best- and worst-case scenarios, it wasn’t intended to characterize everything, but rather the bookends so staff can better inform the design. The study was done mostly in the absence of the adoption of high performing heat pumps, and internally staff will be looking at administrative rules around how we design ENERGY BOARD REGULAR MEETING panel and service size, and electric capacity fees. Mr. Amaya said when the new Advanced Distribution Management System, Demand Response Management System, and Customer Information System are all online, they will work in concert together to provide near real-time information. This can help staff identify if a transformer may become compromised if all attached homes are spiking in usage around the same time. Board members and staff discussed how to get electric-forward households to be more participatory in sharing their data, and the value behind knowing what kind of electric devices they have or are planning to have in the future. CITY BOARDS & COMMISSIONS SCHEDULE Ms. Fredrickson created a spreadsheet containing meeting information for every City Board or Commission, broken down by Type, (Type 1, 2, or Quasi-Judicial). The Board will use this information to follow other Boards or Commissions to try and find areas where there may be overlapping areas of interest and purview. Each Board member will send Chairperson Tenbrink a Board they are interested in following along with (monitoring agendas, meeting minutes, attending when prudent), and report back to the Energy Board during Board member reports. BOARD MEMBER REPORTS Board member Moore attended a seminar about heat pumps, and she will send the slides, and possibly a link to the recording, to Ms. Fredrickson to distribute to the Board. Board member Althouse said he does not want the Board or staff to chase money, his point is to help identify the grants that can help the City get to and achieve the big ideas of the future. FUTURE AGENDA REVIEW The Board will send focused ideas to Chairperson Tenbrink for their upcoming work session. The Board’s May 11 meeting will have a discussion about Building Energy Scoring, as well as a Quarterly Service Area Report update and an Energy Services program update. ADJOURNMENT The Energy Board adjourned at 8:31 pm.