Randy Manion: Good morning or good afternoon, wherever you may be, and welcome to the fourth webinar of the 2017 DOE Tribal Energy Webinar Series. Today's webinar: Spending Energy Dollars Wisely. I'm Randy Manion, today's webinar chair, and manager of Western Area Power Administration's Renewable Resource Program. Let's go over some event details. Today's webinar is being recorded, and will be made available on DOE's Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs website, along with copies of today's PowerPoint presentations, in about one week. Everyone will receive a post webinar email with the link to the page where the slides and recording are located.
Because we're recording this webinar, all phones have been muted. We'll answer your questions at the end of all the presentations. However, you can submit a written question at any time by clicking on the question button located in the webinar control box on your screen. And we'll get to those questions at the end of the presentations. We'll try to keep the webinar to no longer than two hours. So let's get started with opening remarks from Lizana Pierce. Ms. Pierce is the program manager in the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs office duty station in Golden, Colorado.
Lizana is responsible for managing technical assistance services, implementing national funding, and financing programs, and administering the resultant tribal energy project grants and agreements. She has more than 20 years of clean energy technology project development and management experience assisting tribes in developing their energy resources and building their energy visions. She holds a bachelor's of science degree in mechanical engineering from Colorado State University, and pursued a master's in business administration through the University of Northern Colorado. And, Lizana, it's good to have you back, and the virtual floor is now yours.
Lizana Pierce: Thank you, Randy. And thank you all for joining us. Hello. Welcome to the fourth webinar of the 2017 series. This webinar series is sponsored by two US Department of Energy Organizations – the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs, otherwise known as the Office of Indian Energy, and the Western Area Power Administration. The Office of Indian Energy directs, fosters, coordinates, and implements energy planning, education, management, and programs that assist tribes with energy development, capacity building, energy infrastructure, energy costs, and electrification of Indian lands and homes.
To provide this assistance, our deployment program works with the Department of Energy across government agencies, and with the Indian tribes and organizations, to help Indian tribes in _____ _____ native villages, overcome the barriers to energy development. Our deployment program is composed of a three pronged approach consisting of financial assistance, technical assistance, and education and capacity building. And this tribal energy webinar series is just one example of our education and capacity building efforts.
The webinar series is part of the Office of Indian Energy's efforts to support fiscally responsible energy business and economic development decision-making, and information sharing among tribes, and is intended to provide attendees with information on the tools and resources to develop and implement tribal energy plans, programs, and projects, and to highlight tribal energy case studies, which you'll hear both Craig and James a little bit later, and to identify business strategies tribes can use to expand their energy options and develop sustainable local economies.
Today's webinar, Spending Energy Dollars Wisely, will provide guidance on how to identify and prioritize your energy opportunities in your projects, and, during the webinar, attendees will learn about a number of strategies, tools, and technical assistance opportunities to help develop deliberate approaches to maximizing your energy dollars. We hope the webinar series is useful. We welcome your feedback. So please let us know if there are ways we can make the series better. And, with that, I'll turn it back over to Randy. Randy?
Randy Manion: Thank you. And we have three additional speakers today. Emma Elgqvist, James Alexie, and Craig Moore. And I'll introduce all three of our speakers now. Emma is an engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, as part of the REopt team. Emma's work includes providing technical assistance and deployment guidance on renewable energy technologies to meet aggressive energy goals, conducting renewable energy screenings, and evaluating renewable energy in storage deployment potential.
Emma also leads the NREL efforts with the Federal Energy Management Program's technical assistance project. And portal. Which provides agencies with support in the most critical areas of renewable energy project development. Emma holds a bachelor's of science degree in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech, Georgia Institute of Technology, and for those golfing enthusiasts, that's Bobby Jones' alma mater. And an MS in engineering management from the Colorado School of Mines. Following Emma is James Alexie. Mr. Alexie started working for the Coeur D'Alene Tribe in 2007. Since 2012, he has been working for the Coeur D'Alene Tribe Development Corporation, where he is the CEO.
The Coeur D'Alene Tribe Development Corporation looks to create economic development opportunities on or near the reservation. Some of the businesses that the corporation oversees are the Benewah Market, Benewah ACE Hardware, Benewah Automotive Center, Plummer Liquor, and a 5,000 acre Coeur d'Alene tribal farm. Mr. Alexie has a bachelor's of administrations in – or a bachelor of arts in accounting, and an MBA from the University of Idaho.
Then our concluding speaker is Craig Moore. Mr. Moore is vice president of planning and development at Tlingit Haida Regional Housing Authority in Juneau, Alaska. Craig has been at Tlingit Haida for almost 20 years, and Tlingit Haida Regional Housing Authority is recognized as a leader in providing durable, energy efficient and affordable housing in the challenging maritime climate of Southeast Alaska's temperate rainforest. Craig has over 40 years' experience working in cold climate construction as a contractor, a building inspector, a building science trainer, and an energy rater.
He enjoys working with 12 federally recognized tribes that Tlingit Haida services in Southeast Alaska's island communities to provide healthy and sustainable housing solutions for tribal families. And Craig believes strongly in local hire and workforce training to raise the local workforce up to professional standards, and best practices in cold climate building science and energy efficient construction techniques. He also believes strongly in educating families about energy efficiency awareness, healthy homes, and mold prevention.
In the past five years, he has been focusing on converting homes in this region from fossil fuels, _____ oil, to local, renewable green energy solutions such as biomass, solar, PV, and heat pumps. Craig firmly believes that energy efficiency and renewable energy are essential to building sustainable communities in this region. So, with that, Emma, just give me a moment to get your slide deck up, and we'll get started. Okay, it's all yours, Emma.
Emma Elgqvist: All right, thank you. Again, my name is Emma Elgqvist, and I'm an engineer here at NREL in Golden, Colorado. And I spend a lot of my time performing and thinking about renewable energy screenings and helping tribes, federal agencies, commercial stakeholders, evaluate their renewable energy opportunities before starting on the project development process. Today I'm going to spend a few minutes talking about strategic energy planning, and the importance of renewable energy screenings. And then go over several prescreening and screening tools that many of which are publically available or available for download. So you're able to access them and use them for evaluating renewable energy opportunities at your site.
Next slide, please. So strategic energy planning is a planning process and framework that can be used early on in the renewable energy project implementation process, as well as kind of throughout it, to help define directions and goals of renewable energy projects, and to provide a roadmap for those projects. It can help various stakeholders work together towards a common goal. There are several different steps in this process. And these can be adjusted kind of based on a tribe or agency specific needs. But the main takeaway here is this is an iterative process.
You may go this once at kind of the beginning of your planning process. Then revisit it as goals or constraints or additional resources or information are available. Next slide, please. So the importance of setting goals and prioritizing projects can kind of help you throughout the process. So by establishing these goals, you can kind of have something to measure up to. And so when you're faced with multiple different options that you're evaluating, you can see how those options stack up against the various goals. Are you just trying to save money? Are you trying to implement as much renewables as possible?
These can vary from site to site, community to community. So having these goals can then help you evaluate those projects against something. And prioritizing different goals can help you evaluate strategies that achieve the greatest results with the least amount of effort, and often money. Next slide, please. The strategic energy plan can do a lot of things for you. Including cost-savings. Potential revenue. There's lots of different kind of goals. And outcomes of these. And so again, these will vary. Depending on kind of what's important to your community, and stakeholders.
The Department of Energy's Office of Indian Energy provides Tribes and Alaska Native communities with strategic energy planning assistance. There's a link here at the bottom of the page. If that's something you're interested in, you can click on this link here. This will be available, and the presentation, after the webinar today. And request assistance for your site or tribe. Next slide, please.
So there are – I'm going to switch gears here a little bit now on talking about screening for renewable energy project potential. There's a lot of different drivers of renewable energy project potential. And each of these are typically considered at a high level in a renewable energy screening. And so starting on the left here, with the resource data. So what's the amount, and magnitude of resources available for various different renewable energy resources in your area? How much space do you have to work with? This can constrain and kind of define system _____ _____ for something like PV and wind.
What's the current utility cost that you're paying, or cost of running diesel generators? And this provides a benchmark to which renewable energy generation can be compared. And so is it going to be more expensive to employ a renewable energy project, or is it going to provide cost savings on an annual basis? Then inflation and escalation rates, how are these expected to change in the next 20-25 years? Renewable energy projects typically have a lifespan of something like 25 years. And so it's important to consider how your costs may change in the future.
Then, finally, are there incentives, either federal, state, local, that can help reduce the overall cost of the renewable energy project? And so typically with a renewable energy screening you'd consider each of these factors at a high level, using the best available data. And then if the project looks cost effective, or promising, at kind of a high level, you'd then move onto a more detailed feasibility assessment where you would try to gather more data, either through onsite verification, and perform kind of a more detailed study. So you can move onto the next slide, please.
So, shown here is the five phases of an onsite renewable energy project implementation phase. And so this initial renewable screening and identification of a project is really the first step. Other steps that are included here – forming a strong project team. And that's important throughout the entire process. And then performing project validation. So really verifying the results of an initial screening. Moving onto procurement. And then finally the construction and performance period. And so this presentation is going to focus on tools that are available for this first step. So initial screening and identification of projects.
So today I'm going to be talking about energy decision tools that are used to select the renewable energy technologies that merit further consideration and investment. And so these have been divided into two categories – prescreening tools and screening tools. Prescreening tools are really quick and easy to use, and typically at no or low cost. And technologies that make sense at this stage _____ _____ move onto a more detailed screening.
Screening tools are a little bit more complicated. And they require additional time and expertise to use. So this is something you could do yourself that often is something that you may rely on a contractor to do for you. And, again, the purpose of the multiple stages here is to down-select to the most viable technologies early on to reduce potential costly investments of time and money and technologies that are unlikely to be feasible. So in this presentation I've highlighted a few pre-screening resources, which I will go over in more detail now. Next slide, please. Thanks.
So typically you would start with looking at a renewable energy resource map for your area. So this describes the availability and magnitude of the resources in your location. So what we're looking at here is a resource map of photovoltaic resources in the United States. And so you can see the darker orange in the Southwest, indicating that there's high solar resources here. And Alaska and the Pacific Northwest has much lower resource. The resource varies by about a factor of two across the United States. So it's about twice as good in Southern Arizona as it is in Alaska.
But the resource is available kind of everywhere. If you were to look at something like a biomass map, you may see gaping white holes where there are areas of the country where biomass resources may not be available. You can move onto the next one.
So the renewable energy resource is one factor to take into consideration. And those resource maps provide a good general picture of the renewable energy resources, but they're not very granular. And so onsite verification might be required further on the development process to help verify the resources, especially for something like wind that's very site-specific, and may be affected by the topography of the site itself. But in addition to the resources, the economic kind of potential is more insightful. And so what's shown on this map here is a financial map showing the savings to investment ratio for a 10 kilowatt PV system across the United States.
And so a savings to investment ratio is a measure of economic viability where an SIR greater than one suggests the technology is economically viable. And so what this takes into consideration in addition to the resource availability are the costs that the resource would offset. And so this looks at the average commercial electricity rate across the country. You can see darker areas in red here indicating a higher SIR, higher potential for savings from the PV projects, where California stands out. This is an area with high solar resource. As well as pretty high electricity rates. As well as the Northeast, where the resource isn't as good, but where the retail electricity rates are really high, so solar may still make sense.
You can compare that to the Pacific Northwest, which again has – tends to have a lower solar resource, as well as pretty cheap cost of electricity, due to abundance of hydropower there. So this is just using averages per utility providers. And are not specific to a general site. Can move onto the next slide.
So another prescreening tool you may want to use is an LCOE calculator. LCOE stands for the Levelized Cost of Energy. And this is a common metric that can be used for renewable energy electricity generating technologies. What the LCOE provides is a point of comparison between – for a renewable resource that takes into account the capital cost, operation maintenance cost, as well as the performance of the system, and fuel cost. And so what this calculator does with a few inputs from the user, is to calculate the LCOE of the renewable energy systems that can then be compared to the current or expected utility cost at a particular site.
And so if the LCOE of the renewable energy system is lower than that of the current utility cost, that indicates that the renewable energy is a good investment, it should be pursued further. Again, this is a pretty high level calculation, but it's a good indicator for whether or not a project has economic viability. And I should add – each of these resources, there's a link here at the bottom you can click, and are able to evaluate these for yourself, for a given site. You can move onto the next slide, please.
Finally, I've highlighted PVWatts here, which is a solar screening tool available again publically available, through a website. PVWatts uses solar resource data and energy production models to estimate the energy production from the PV system in a given location. And so all you need to do is enter your address, and click go. It has a few options where you can adjust things like the tilt, system size, but really all you need to enter is the location of your site. And so it will give you kind of annual, monthly, even down to kind of hourly expected performance and production from a PV system. So this is a really _____ _____ _____ super easy to use, and has kind of hundreds of thousands of users each year.
Developers use this to get an initial estimate of resources from a system. So it's using weather data that's available for hundreds and hundreds of locations throughout the United States. So it's pretty accurate. And for something like PV, you may be able to implement a project without having to perform onsite verification. You can move onto the next slide, please.
So. Next I'm going to go over a few screening tools. So these tools are more complex than the prescreening tools, and take into consideration a combination of factors. So both the resource, the technology performance, the cost, financial performance, to give a more holistic picture of the potential of renewable energy systems. On the downside, they're more complex. And so they require a little bit more expertise in order to be able to use them. So it's something that you may be able to kind of watch webinars and be able to learn how to use these.
Or, you can rely on contractors or technical assistance programs available where someone may be able to use these tools to assess opportunities at your site. So the results from these screenings can be used in later stages, for RFPs, budgeting purposes, and engineering studies. Next slide, please.
I'm going to start with RETScreen, which is an Excel-based software analysis tool. It's available through the National Resources Canada – just a _____ of the Canadian government. It can help you evaluate opportunities for PV, solar thermal, wind, small hydro, biomass, ground source heat pump, CHP, and some energy efficiency measures. It includes databases for a lot of these technologies. And helps the user determine the technical and financial viability of potential renewable energy projects. You can – I don't have the link on here, but you can go and download this tool for use. Next slide, please.
Next is the System Advisor Model, or SAM. It's a tool that's been developed here at NREL. Originally, it was focused mainly on solar projects, or solar technologies. But it has been expanded to include additional technologies, including wind and geothermal power. What SAM provides is a detailed kind of performance from the technologies, as well as a very detailed economic model. And so this tool is targeted towards financiers, or developers, who are trying to understand kind of the various cost and cash flow associated with renewable energy systems.
However, it does have a few different levels of analysis. And so you can use SAM to perform just a simple LCOE, _____ _____ _____, or you can use SAM to kind of call on PVWatts to be able to provide some of the energy production for you, if that's something that you have access to. Again, this is a free, publically available tool that you can download by visiting the SAM website. Next slide, please, thank you.
And then finally, REopt, which is another tool that has been developed here at NREL. It's a planning tool that can be used to evaluate renewables, micro grid, as well as operational energy strategies. Kind of two unique features of REopt is that it considers a mix of technologies, _____ _____ _____ between something like PV and wind, and what we've been using it a lot for lately is specifically the interaction between PV and storage. And then the other unique feature is it's an optimization model. And so what you enter into the model is just some information about your site, but you don't need to select a specific technology or a specific size of technology to evaluate.
Rather, the tool gives you the optimal results, based on the goals and constraints that you determined. Like many of the other tools, it draws from data available at NREL, the GIS resource data, incentives available from DSIRE, and renewable energy technology information. Currently, it models PV, wind, solar hot water, solar vent preheat, biomass, waste to energy, landfill gas, generators, and battery storage. And currently this planning platform is provided as a service by NREL. And so it's not something you're able to download.
However – and you can go to the next slide, soon – there is an in-progress publically-available version of REopt. So it'll be a web tool where users can estimate the optimal size of PV and battery to minimize the cost of energy to a given site. And so it will allow homeowners, building owners, and sellers to evaluate the economics of PV and battery storage. So it's kind of a stripped down, simple version of the full REopt platform. But will be super simple for users to enter just a few pieces of data, and get back some initial economic information for batteries and PV systems.
Next slide, please. So, finally, kind of wanted to quickly go through this renewable energy screening process. This is pretty similar to strategic energy planning, but focused specifically on these screenings. So what you would typically do is start by defining the goals of the analysis. And so what are you trying to achieve with the project at this particular site? Are you trying to reach net zero? Are you trying to operate as a micro grid? Do you want to install a certain megawatt or capacity of renewables? Are you trying to lower cost of energy?
And so defining those goals early can help shape the analysis. You would then collect and review the data that's needed for the analysis. So, again, for something like one of these prescreening _____ screening, that data is – there's not too many inputs you typically need. And you can start with just what's available, or make assumptions, or best guesses, kind of based on prior experiences, to get a sense if this technology is going to work, or do we need to move on and consider a different technology.
You would perform an initial analysis, and again this is an iterative step where you would perform an initial analysis, go through and make any adjustments to the data, or goals, and then run additional analysis. And finally you'd go through and identify sites for more in-depth assessments. Next slide, please.
So I've listed here just a couple of resources available. Many of these were listed on the slides themselves, where these tools were described. But wanted to just list them out one more time so you had them all in one place. My contact information is on the next slide here. I think we're doing questions at the end. So, thank you.
Randy Manion: Thank you, Emma. And, Craig, or James, give me a moment to get your slide deck up. James, it's all yours.
James Alexie: Great. Thank you. All right. My name is James Alexie. As mentioned earlier, CEO of Coeur d'Alene Tribe Development Corporation. Today we're going to talk about how we ended up receiving a grant and doing and performing energy efficient projects for the Benewah Market. The Benewah Market is essentially one of the only grocery stores on the reservation. The closest grocery store is 30 miles away. Next slide, please.
So, first we'll do a brief overview of the Coeur D'Alene Tribe. Next, we'll discuss a Benewah Market project, along with a brief overview of how we got – were awarded the grant for this project. And then finally we'll discuss next steps and lessons learned. Next slide. The Coeur d'Alene reservation today is roughly 334,000 acres. This doesn't include any submerged lands in the lower southern portion of Lake Coeur D'Alene. Our aboriginal territory was originally around 5 million acres. Currently we have around 6,700 residents, 2,300 of those being tribal enrolled.
Some of those aren't technically Coeur d'Alene tribe members. They could be members from other tribes. Today the tribe relies on forestry, agriculture, gaming, and other small businesses that I oversee. For economic subsistence. And then we also rely on fishing, hunting, gathering, food, and medicine. Next slide.
This map gives a brief overview of what our original aboriginal territory was. With the dotted line. And then in the center of that you'll see a dark line in the center that shows our current reservation. Then above that you can slightly see a dotted line, which was our reservation boundary as of 1873. Next slide.
This slide is a close up so you get a better feel of our current reservation boundary in the solid pink line, and then what our reservation boundary was with the dotted line above that. You can see in the top of this map, Coeur d'Alene, the city. They have grocery stores. It's a small metropolitan area. Then the next closest grocery store would be Saint Mary, on the edge of the reservation, to the left of the – to the right of the center of that map. So you can see that the Benewah Market is a primary resource for a lot small towns on or near the reservation. Next slide.
The Natural Resource Department, and, more specifically, Tiffany Algood, in the Environmental Programs Office, had foresight and saw an opportunity to receive energy efficiency assistance. And did so. Roughly in 2008, I believe. And so that's part of the reason why we're going to talk a little about the Natural Resource Department. Without them, we would not have received this grant. So the Natural Resource Department was established in 1992, as a standalone department. Today, there are 12 programs underneath natural resources. Of those, again, include the Environmental Programs Office, and then within that, Tiffany Algood, who has sort of been spearheading all the grants that we've received to date.
So in June 2012, there was an opportunity to get a conservation block grant for energy efficiency. The tribe chose McKinstry Inc to come in and help do an analysis on 34buildings. The evaluation concluded there was opportunities for energy efficiency improvements, programmable thermostats, lighting retrofits, improvements in envelope sealing and insulation. At that time, during that assessment, Tiffany realized that there was a real opportunity in doing more in-depth analysis. Next slide.
And in doing so, while she was completing this project, _____ _____ Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy with McKinstry, she felt that she wanted to reach an ASHRAE Level 3, which is a more in-depth analysis of our energy usage, and opportunities. Next slide? In doing so, she applied with the Department of Energy on an Energy Efficiency and Deployment in Indian Country grant in 2011. We were awarded that contract. And in doing so created a partnership with an energy consultant called Ourevolution.
During this grant, again, a more in-depth analysis was done. And in doing that we created several partners to help us through this. The Bonneville Power Administration, which provides power to many power companies, including the City of Plummer, Clearwater Power, and Kootenai Electric, all became active participants in this new analysis to determine what opportunities the Coeur D'Alene Tribe could have. Next slide.
During the feasibility study, they did an analysis on 36 buildings this time, doing so on ASHRAE Level 3. During this, they completed the draft in November of 2013. Around that time, another grant had been released by the department of energy, which we applied for. During this – you can see here it took time to finalize this draft. So it took another year for the draft report to be finalized in November 2014. And the Department of Energy closed out that grant in December of 2014. Next slide.
This study was extensive and in-depth. It included six main sections. As you can see here. And with that, Tiffany and her group sat down with each _____ _____ leaders, department heads, _____ some of the buildings that were noted as real opportunities in terms of energy efficiency. For myself, there were two buildings. Our automotive center had real high energy use that was well beyond what it should have been. And so we were able to find that the energy company was not calculating our energy usage properly, and we received a pretty sizable credit. And the second building that was seen as inefficient was the market.
And so with the grant coming that we're going to discuss here in a moment, we were able to improve our energy efficiency in what was seen as two of the worst buildings. Next slide.
So, again, the environmental office teamed with development corporation and applied for a 2013 grant with the Department of Energy. And again we were able to do that with two prior grants, and two prior reports that we had completed. Next slide. This picture here shows exterior of the Benewah Market. It's located in Plummer, Idaho. It's approximately – the sales floor is approximately 16,000 square feet. This building was completed in the '80s. This building really hasn't been updated since then. So one large upgrade that was done is they put new lighting in, fluorescent lighting. Next slide.
The goal of this project was, again, most importantly, to improve energy efficiency and reduce energy costs. As a grocery store, it's a low margin industry. So any opportunities to save a few dollars is something that you strongly go after. We also wanted to include the health and safety of the food we sold. A lot of this comes down to perception. If you have frost on your frozen products, they might not look as appealing. A lot had to do with perception. And then, again, big opportunity was decrease operation and maintenance costs. The cases we had in the building were extremely old, and cost a significant amount of money to maintain. Finally, increased economic viability of our businesses. Next slide.
So the project goals were to replace existing floor cases on the sales floor, replacing them with more energy efficient cases, which allowed us to reduce thermal capacity, and reduce the number of compressors necessary to run the system. Next slide.
We were also needed to replace the roof top condensers. Refrigeration systems are designed as a whole. So in reducing thermal capacity, you needed to replace the condensers in the top. Also, we changed refrigerant to a more greener refrigerant that was developed by Honeywell. We also chose to replace 15 evaporators within our walk-in coolers. This would allow us to again save on energy with the latest technology and variable speed fans. And then because the thermal load was reduced, we had to replace our refrigerant lines in order to keep the head pressures in a good state.
Throughout this process, I've had the opportunity to learn a lot about refrigeration, given that it's not my background. Next slide. So the goal of the project was to reduce our energy usage by 30 percent, and save at least $16,000.00 a year in energy costs. Much of those savings would go towards paying down the loan that we took to complete the project. Next slide.
Everything I spoke of before had to do with dollars and energy efficiency, but this project also had the – gave us the opportunity to rebrand our store. Again, as I said, the store had been built in the '80s, and nothing had been really done to the interior. So the refrigeration overhaul really gave us an opportunity to really look at the envelope as a whole, and allowed us to move forward with a strong strategy to again rebrand the Benewah Market. Our focus was to work with a design firm. We created a new look. An industrial theme. That theme has been very popular these days. Reclaimed wood, metal, more of a clean look.
And then we also were focusing on changing the bakery and deli and rebranding them to a more niche – as everybody knows, _____ _____ _____ _____, and then healthy eating is also something that's sort of hit the country pretty hard. So we wanted to have our deli turn more into a bistro and provide healthier opportunities for our employees and communities. We also took out an investment and re-did a new outdoor sign, digital reader board, and then our focus again was on healthy foods, and then sort of a Native American theme. We had a tourism consultant come in on different grants and indicated that since we are a Native American community, we need to use that in order to improve tourism.
So we're going to provide a lot of Native art in a Native theme within the building. And it also serves as a good benchmark in terms of showing the pride that we have in the building and businesses we invest in. Next slide.
So these pictures kind of show you a before and after. The bottom two pictures show what two sections of our store looked like prior. So the bottom left showed we had currently ten self-contained refrigeration units in our building that helped out house products, anything from dairy, cheese, milk, beverages, in our building. And then you can look at the picture above it and notice now what we've been able to do. And so again, we went with sort of a reclaimed look on our walls. And we're able to house product in a more marketing fashion. And then on the right hand side, you can see what our meat department looked like before and after.
Before, I mean again you got low efficiency open-faced coolers, and then above you can see what the meat department looks like. This is a really important department for us, because with the competitiveness within the grocery industry, Wal-Mart and WinCo are competing pretty heavily on price. And so for us, we need to find our – to make sure we stick to our competencies. And one of them is providing a good meat product. So a lot of people shop mainly at our store for the meat department.
Also, the meat department provides services to the community like wild game. So we cut and prepare food for smoking meat, or _____ _____, anything really that you would need. So the meat department again is a pretty important department for us. Next slide.
As I said earlier, we had really aging cases. On the top right top picture there, you can see we decided when we got the grant to close those cases down, because they were leaking water all over the floor, due to their age. Then you can tell the floor is beat up a little bit, again, because of the cases. So you can see in the bottom right what we've been able to do in terms of provide a really nice place for people to shop, a more modern building. We plan on replacing the floor sometime this fall, after the summer rush. In order to complete our project. We're going to paint the ceiling. I mean it's – I'm really excited about the direction of the grocery store, and what it means to the people who have been working there.
We have people who have been working at the grocery store for 30 years. So this goes back to them, too, in terms of having pride and working at a location that looks nice. Next slide.
So you can see here we sort of did a deli remodel. We're actually going to go to another phase of a new remodel in order to provide equipment to provide healthier foods. I'm really looking forward to that. Again, it's called a deli now, but I'm hoping we can fit it into the theme of a bistro. Again, more home cooked meals, less sodium, less grease. Next slide.
Here's our produce department. Again, another important aspect to our community in terms of being able to provide more variety. And a better product. In producing a new case and a new misting system, we've allowed our greens to become fresher and have a longer shelf life. Our produce department has seen a pretty good spike within its produce department sales. We're really excited about that. As you can see here, we replaced our dry tables with a new dry table, so I mean the investment we are continuing to put into this building is definitely paying off in terms of providing opportunities.
Again, we're really the only large store within the community. You can see we have costumes there. This picture was taken in October. So we saw a lot of what we consider general merchandise. Halloween costumes, Halloween items. This next slide here is the bakery. You can see it's still under construction. Things don't move as quickly as I'd like them to. But you can see what the bakery is going to look like in the bottom right picture. Again, with the savings that we've been able to realize, we again have more opportunities to invest more. So looking forward to providing a place for people to sit down, relax, fit into the theme that I think people in metropolitan areas are used to, in terms of a nice coffee shop with pastries to sit down and relax. Next slide.
Other investments the tribe has been able to do. We worked with the city to provide a nice bus stop across the street from our grocery store. Then you can see on the right there – new digital reader board, new signage. Really happy about the dances at the top. You got a traditional male and a fancy dancer, female fancy dancer, on top. Those were done by a _____ _____ artist named Smoker Marchand who does really great work for the community. Again, we – I'm showing you all these slides of all the improvements because again the grant has given us an opportunity to invest back into our store, in a project that was pretty sizeable.
The refrigeration project itself was going to end up a little bit over $800,000.00. So the $250,000.00 grant we got from the Department of Energy made that project a lot more feasible. With that award, and with the progress the store has made over the last three years, the tribe also put in cash, and then we took out loans for $200,000.00. So that really made the project feasible. Again, a grocery store doesn't have a ton of margins. So it's a considerable amount of cash to put into a grocery store in a small community. Next slide.
So what's next? We are looking at other energy rebates. Right now, we're working with Bonneville Power Association, who's creating an energy incentive package. We're hoping to receive rebates of upwards of $70,000.00, depending on how much energy efficiency we've realized. We went into the slower and probably least efficient time of the year this winter. And we're still about at 25 percent energy reduction. I think when we hit these summer months, this is where we're really going to hit some energy efficiency given the upgrades we've done.
Again, we're going to work towards redoing the floors, painting the ceilings, putting more signage in, and other design elements, to help complete that look. We're going to replace energy lighting with LEDs. We've – Bonneville Power Administration came in, did a study for us, and realized we could save $8,400.00 a year on changing our lights from to LED. And then hopefully we can work with BPA and City of Plummer, the power company, to allow us to receive a rebate of 70 percent on that install, which would be really beneficial. Even without it, I think the LED technology and cost of LEDs has made those projects feasible.
And then Bonneville Power also came in and worked with us on other strategies in order to reduce energy. I think again the grant allowed us to get this ball rolling, really kind of say okay, where can we squeeze every dollar out, and what can we learn about how our building operates? And so next slide.
So for me, one of the big lessons I did not put on here is how much I've learned. I guess I said I learned a lot about the refrigeration industry, but also a lot about energy efficiency and the opportunities we have. Another lesson is sometimes the first bid you get is the best and the lowest. So in an effort to make everybody competitive, _____ _____ _____ process, sometimes that doesn't – sometimes you can't realize any additional savings. So and securing commitment for energy incentives sometimes can be challenging.
So we worked with small municipal energy company, and sometimes those things can be somewhat political, whereas you work with large metropolitan areas, where the huge power companies already have these incentive plans in place, it's not necessarily negotiable, it's just doing the right paperwork. Then finally just how fast time moves. So this project took a little longer than we anticipated, and again, time just seemed to move quickly. So there's my contact information. If you'd like any additional information. In terms of more in-depth, or some things that may be Tiffany and I learned along the way, feel free to shot me an email. Thank you.
Randy Manion: Thanks, James. Craig, give me a moment to pull your deck up. Okay, Craig, it's all yours.
Craig Moore: Thank you. And greetings, everyone, from Southeast Alaska. My name is Craig Moore, vice president of planning and development of Tlingit Haida Regional Housing Authority here in Juneau, Alaska. I've been here about 20 years at the housing authority, thoroughly enjoying this time working with our 12 federally recognized tribal partners here in Southeast Alaska. Helping them with affordable housing needs. And helping them sustain their communities at meeting some of our high energy costs up here. So I'm real happy to be able to share some of our experiences on meeting our energy needs up here in Alaska, and spending our energy dollar wisely. Next slide.
Want to introduce two important ladies and their little friend here that were very instrumental in the housing authority getting out and getting education into our communities and our tribal partners. On the left is Tasha McCoy, in the dark hair. She was full of energy and creative ideas on how to help educate our communities. And on the right is Don Leslie, her partner. And in the middle the energy hog, which these two ladies petitioned from another agency in the state to help them get the education out to our clients. And even though that energy hog is – we fought him hard – he is not an endangered species in Alaska.
I'm going to talk a little about our efforts in the next slides. Next slide, please. I'm going to go through these – some of our problems, and go into them in a little more depth in future slides. But in our region, in Southeast Alaska, we have a high cost of energy. We're in a cold maritime climate. Many of our homes are not energy efficient. Many of our homeowners lack education on energy efficiency and some of the building sciences. And many of our communities have few jobs. And incomes are usually low. And as we all know there's never enough money to fix all the problems. Next slide.
So how are we tackling out problem? I'm going to go into all of these in more detail on other slides. But I want to thank the Department of Energy Tribal Energy Program for a wonderful grant we received back in 2011 for energy efficiency audits, assessments, and alternative energy studies. And also we received funds from the USDA Rural Utility Service, and the State of Alaska, and private partners too helped us out. So our solutions were to do homeowner education, and community education. Perform home energy assessments and energy use monitoring in about 400 homes.
We performed professional energy audits on our multi-family apartment buildings to develop scopes of work. And we developed energy conservation improvements options. And finally we've done a lot through state agencies. We've done a lot through weatherization, appliance and heating upgrades. Next slide.
Some facts about our high cost of energy. Our rates are up to 275 percent above the national average. Some of our small isolated island villages are on diesel generator power. They're served by electric cooperatives and there's no grids. We're not connected by any grids to the Lower 48 electrical systems. Our electric rates are up to 68 cents a kilowatt hour, in some of our high cost diesel electric communities. The state provides a power cost equalization subsidy for some eligible households that lowers that rate down to about 26 cents on the first 500 kilowatt hours, which is really helpful..
So our average village households in these high cost communities have learned to conserve energy, and they're only using about 350 kilowatt hours a month, way less than I use here in Juneau. In our larger towns, they have hydroelectric generation, small dams close to their community with micro grids, and their rates are as low as 10 cents a kilowatt hour. Next slide, please.
Heating oil. Primarily we use diesel oil for heating our homes. And that's up to $5.50 a gallon in some of our more remote communities. It all has to be delivered by barge from Seattle. There are no pipelines here. No roads connecting our villages. And we have no coal, or no natural gas in our region. The high cost of oil means that many households simply cannot afford to heat with it. Even though they had oil boilers in their house, they now have to heat with wood. And with wood, we find that there's a high incidence of mold in bedrooms. And many residents show asthma symptoms, due to this, as the heat is concentrated in the living room, just not getting back into the bedrooms. Next slide.
The cold maritime climate. We are an island archipelago, the Tongass National Forest, the Inside Passage, many names. We're along the Gulf of Alaska, adjacent British Columbia and Yukon, and we are hit by Pacific storms. Our heating degree days, between 7,000 and 9,000 heating degree days. In Alaska, that's considered pretty much the banana belt, compared to the far north. But we have up to 160 inches of rain a year. And coming in often horizontally on Pacific storms. And we're subject to this freeze thaw cycle that happens on an almost weekly basis, if not daily. Next slide.
Homeowners definitely can use some energy efficiency education. They have habits like this, in this photo, where they're heating with a wood stove, and have a pot of water that's simmering on the wood stove all the time. That puts a lot of moisture in the atmosphere, creates its own issue inside the house, with high humidity. We burn a lot of wet wood. We're in a wet region. Our wood is hard to get dry. That also creates some issues. Our homeowners have little exposure to building science and some of the advanced theories of how a house works as a system. But they are very knowledgeable about their own subsistence lifestyles. In fact, they're experts at that. As I mentioned before, they're very sharp about how to keep their energy costs down, primarily just by turning things off. Sometimes things that we wouldn't prefer they turned off. Like the ventilation system in the home. Next slide.
Our homes – many of the older homes were not very energy efficient. They had high air leakage, so the heat in the homes escapes to the outside. Poor insulation, poor ventilation systems, many of the heating systems were oil, and they're fairly old and inefficient now. And many times there's poor maintenance on the homes, primarily due to lack of funds to maintain the homes. And old appliances. Energy inefficient appliance. So this all leads to high costs, and high incidence of molds in many homes. Next slide.
Our communities are isolated. They have high energy costs. Therefore there's very few jobs. There's no commerce. Because of that. They're mostly subsistence communities. Jobs are seasonal – whether it's fishing – there are jobs in local governments, schools, and at the housing authority, but really there is just not a great economy in these small communities that sometimes only have around 400 people. This is Angoon, this photo. Next slide, please.
So as we know, there's never enough money to fix all the problems. The energy costs keep going up, except for oil. Recently that's come down a little, which has been helpful. But wages are not rising across the board to keep up with inflation. And as we all know, grants to help fix the problem are getting harder to find. Next slide.
So some of our solutions and successes. To tackling what I call this energy hog problem. And one of them was our Energy Cents Program. I introduced Tasha McCoy and Dawn Leslie to you in a prior slide, and they headed up this Energy Cents program, which was one of our most popular programs through this DOE Tribal Grant. They went out into the communities to do community and homeowner education. They brought in lots of partners. Other organizations. To assist. And they went into over 400 homes to do home energy assessments, and energy use monitoring.
It was an extremely popular program. And I think the results from that program left a lasting impression in our communities. Next slide. To do this Energy Cents program, we recruited some local what we call field assessors from the various communities, and brought them into Juneau for some professional training. And this photo on the right is Markham George, who is a professor of building science at the University of Alaska Southeast, who is a nationally known expert on our cold maritime climate. And he was able to give some excellent training for these local field assessors, who would then go out into the homes in their communities, and test all their appliances with kilowatt meters to see just how much they're consuming, and educate the clients. Next slide.
Here's an example of some of our trainees going out and doing a home assessment. This is actually a training shot here. That's Tasha McCoy, the coordinator for this in the foreground there. But they learned how to go into homes and do thorough assessments inside each home, talk to the clients, find out how the clients live and operate their homes, and then help instruct the clients on how to operate some of their appliances more efficiently by turning off those toasters, things like that. We'd put in strips, energy strips that they could turn off a number of appliances at once, if they needed. Next slide.
We held community meetings and energy fairs. This was a great way to get the entire community enthused about energy efficiency, to help give them education, educational information on what they can do as a homeowner to lower their energy costs. And keep their homes healthy. The indoor air quality health. And so Tasha and Dawn did an excellent job of holding these community meetings. And we concentrated on kids a lot, because when kids get enthusiastic about things, they take it back to their parents. Next slide, please.
This was where the Energy Hog came in. A lot of fun. Energy Hog was a real hit with the kids. And obviously was a very good educational tool to help show kids where energy is burned up rapidly, and where we can help conserve. Next slide, please.
One fun program was in Angoon, where the kids would play the light bulb game, where the Energy Hog would show – talk about various light bulbs. Incandescent bulbs, compact fluorescent light bulbs, LED bulbs, and say which ones burned the most energy. Then the kids would act that out. Getting more energetic when the incandescent bulb was raised up. Many ways to get kids enthusiastic about energy conservation and energy efficiency. Next slide.
We held energy fairs in all communities. And it was great. You got your elders to your kids, and everybody enthusiastic about coming out, _____ door prizes. I think as I mentioned earlier, this kind of energy fair that we held really helped get the energy efficiency concept across, and really educated people. Many were very surprised on some of the ways energy is being consumed in their home, and what they could do to help conserve that. Next slide, please.
We had many partners that came. Some of the local banks, some of the other agencies joined in, in our efforts. And here we were able to give 1,500 energy assistance clients received energy savings kits in their homes. So we were – it was remarkable what these two ladies, Tasha McCoy and Dawn Leslie, were able to bring together as community participation to help get the word out. Next slide, please.
Here's a couple of some of our home energy assessors we trained up. There was a lot of planning, obviously, when you do something this large. You're getting out to all these island communities, and doing 400 homes. These gentlemen from some of the communities here, this was the community of Kake, three gentlemen from the community of Kake did an excellent job getting into those homes in Kake and help educating clients. Next slide.
Teachers getting into the schools, and getting the school districts and teachers involved with the curriculum was a big part of getting this education into the communities. Next slide. And we left in those communities some energy champions. Locals that got all trained up and were enthusiastic about this. And they're still in those communities, and still able to help counsel the elders, and help a community out with this Energy Cents program. Next slide.
There were many program deliverables that came out of that grant. And this is just an example. Where we did some information on the number of households that had allergies and asthma. And this was valuable information for us, as we move forward with trying to find solutions, to make healthier homes. And HUD mold grants, and things like that, to help overcome some of these problems in our communities. Next slide.
To help some of our homeowners out, we created a calculator on our website. There's the link to it. Basically, this is people can log onto our website, and they can start entering information on their – they enter which community they live in, and they can start entering information about their appliances in their house. And this program will help them total up their monthly consumption of their appliances, and estimate their monthly utility bill. Fun program. Welcome to go look at it. Next slide, please.
So I think the results – we received good data on close to 400 homes in Southeast Alaska. We definitely increased homeowner awareness of energy efficiency and household energy usage. And some places where they might want to change some of their habits. And definitely increased youth awareness of energy efficiency. And we did a lot of energy efficiency upgrades on the light scale – light bulbs, weather stripping, watt meters deployed in many homes. And I think the conclusions of all the Energy Cents program was household education definitely helps save energy.
We realized many, many homes – almost all homes – needed some level of weatherization. And that in our high cost diesel electric communities, we really need to find some renewable energy heating system options. See if we can get off fossil fuels. Next slide.
So another component of our DOE Tribal Energy Grant was perform professional audits on our multi-family apartment buildings. And this was pretty in-depth. We went into all our communities, especially our extremely high energy cost communities, to try to come up with some ideas of what we can do in the future to lower the energy usage and save energy on our multi-family buildings. Next slide.
So. We did over 50 comprehensive energy efficiency audits. Our goal was to try to find ways to reduce our energy consumption by 30 percent or more. And also to look for various funding opportunities so we could go implement some of these energy efficiency upgrades. Next slide, please.
Here's an example of an energy audit, professional energy audit, on a senior housing project that we have in Juneau – Fireweed Place. And it had complex HVAC systems, and it's a fairly complex building. The information that we gained from this energy audit, we've already started to implement, and we've already been able to lower air leakage, and really help out on some of our energy problems in that building. Next slide, please.
On our homes, we would do things like home energy rating certificates, energy audits using a software program, a modeling program that was developed by the state. Trying to find cost effective improvement options with a savings to investment ratio of one or better. Next slide, please.
And we did a lot of analysis of various energy costs, and what would be the most economical way to heat homes – biomass turned out to be a good source, non-fossil fuel source. Next slide.
And in our hydroelectric communities, where we have fairly low energy, electrical energy cost, we started looking at heat pumps as a very viable solution. Next slide, please.
And, so. Some of the things we've been doing ever since we finished that feasibility study, as we were – weatherization program, super-insulating our building shelves, we're installing air source heat pumps, biomass heating. We've even done some solar PV up in Kake, Alaska, at our senior center. And we're definitely improving our ventilation systems. And all the time concentrating on client education. Next slide, please.
Here are some pictures of our weatherization program. Funded by the State of Alaska. We used local crews. Go out there and help insulate their homes. Next slide, please.
We've trained our crews on the proper way to install windows and flash walls so that it'll hold up to our Pacific storm driven horizontal rains, which gets past just about everything. But we've learned to flash our buildings properly so it all drains to the exterior and helps save our building from decaying away. Next slide.
Some of our more modern homes we're building are very energy efficient and durable. We've got great ventilation systems. The thermal boundary on these homes are excellent. I like that picture on the lower there, where you don't see any thawing of the snow on the roof. That roof is totally isolated from the warm space on the interior. Next slide, please.
Our new senior centers. There's one in Saxman, a hydroelectric community. It's built so energy efficient that it hardly uses any heat to heat the building. The biggest load is domestic hot water for all the residents. We heat those with these air to water heat pumps that are about 300 percent efficient. Next slide, please.
Our warehouse in Juneau, we're heating with wood pellets. A clean wood pellet boiler has about a 10 ton silo outside. We made a very efficient warehouse, and this is a great way to get off of fossil fuels. These burn very clean. And we're taking this technology out to some of our other communities also. Next slide, please.
The Kake Senior Center. This is the new senior center – well, it was an old senior center that we modernized in Kake. It's heated with wood pellets. And we also – thanks to a grant from the Erasmus Inn Foundation, the benevolent non-profit foundation here in Alaska, we were able to put in a 9KW solar PV system. It has excellent sun exposure, and no shading. And everything is performing wonderfully. The elders absolutely love this new senior center. Next slide, please.
Example of some of the mini-splits, the air to air heat pumps we're putting in some of our hydroelectric communities to get off fossil fuels. These are very efficient. And the homeowners love them. Next slide, please.
So I think – to sum up – housing authority has been trying for years to find solutions in our Southeast Alaska communities to keep our communities sustainable, help keep them affordable for our residents, and help train our youth up on energy efficient measures, what they can do in their communities for sustainability. Next slide, please.
We received many testimonials. I guess I can just flick through these real quick. We don't have to read them all. But the messages from our clients – they're very, very thankful for this DOE funded, Tribal Energy funded, Energy Cents program, and all the improvements we've been able to do in their communities. Nothing is more heartwarming than to hear these kind of testimonials from your residents. I hope some of this helps you give you some guidance or ideas on what you might do in your communities. Next slide, please.
And we're not going to watch this video now. I know I'm over time. But we have, if you go to YouTube, and Google Tlingit Haida Regional Housing Authority, you'll find a series of nice videos we've done in our Southeast Alaska communities that I think you'll enjoy, with testimonials from some of our Tlingit leaders and Haida leaders. So next slide, please.
So I just want to say thank you to everybody for listening into what we at Tlingit Haida Regional Housing Authority have done in our region. Gunalcheesh. Haw'aa. Thank you. And we hope that you can take away something you might be able to use in your community, too. Thank you very much.
Randy Manion: Thanks, Craig. Excellent. We'll go into our Q&A session right now. Give me a moment to see what questions we have. _____ _____ _____ _____.
Lizana Pierce: Randy, while you're looking, I just wanted to reiterate to everybody that we will have audio and video recordings of this in about a week, of all the presentation and slides. And you'll receive an email in order to locate those.
Randy Manion: Okay. Let's see what questions we have. Is this community next to a body of water that flows year round, and Craig, I'm assuming that question is for you.
Craig Moore: Yes. Well. I don't know exactly which community we're talking about, but yes, we are a bunch of islands in the Tongass National Forest, and we're surrounded by salt water. This is all the Pacific Ocean, the Gulf of Alaska comes up what's called the Inside Passage, so you can come right off the ocean, and come up to our islands. Our islands are all in the salt water. And the tides come. We have tides that come up real high, then go real low. So there could be up to about a 24 foot difference in your tides here, between low tide and high tide. Cruise ships come up from the Lower 48 to come up and admire our scenery up here. And they're able to navigate through this inland Inside Passage to many of our communities. They're not here over winter, though. Winter is all for us.
Randy Manion: Okay. And next question. Solar prices are dropping quickly per kilowatt hour. How are you keeping up with current market prices across the US? And James, and Craig, that's for either one of you.
Craig Moore: James can go first, I guess. Give _____ a try.
James Alexie: So for us, I haven't really seen an increase in energy costs. Bonneville Power will pass onto its – to its buyers. Maybe a two to five percent increase. The City of Plummer has now indicated it would do an increase. But I haven't seen anything that's what I would consider significant.
Emma Elgqvist: Hey, this is Emma. I was going to butt in here to mention that NREL publishes on an annual and quarterly basis cost estimates for PV systems at residential, commercial, and kind of utility size scales. And so we work with manufacturers, installers, to get estimates of those, look at projects that are installed, so there's a little bit of lag between a project being installed and us getting the data. And then also have a lot of internal cost models that help inform kind of prices as well. And so I can send here a link to where those publications are posted.
Randy Manion: Perfect, Emma. Craig, any comments?
Craig Moore: Yeah. I would say about seven or eight years ago, the housing authority participated in our – one of our little communities, Angoon. I had a photo of that. And a demonstration project to equip a single family home with solar PV panels. At that time, costs were still pretty high. But this was a high cost diesel electric community with electricity at 68 cents a kilowatt hour, and the residents and all the kids in the school loved to come and watch how this electric meter on the house would go backward. We don't have any net metering rules in our cooperative communities like that, but it was really helpful.
But, no, the cost of solar PV panels have come down dramatically. And that has really helped us out. That Kake Senior Center, as I'd mentioned, we received a grant from the Erasmus Inn Foundation to go ahead and put in solar PV panels. They're working great. It has really lowered their energy costs in that community. We don't have storage capacity. These are grid connected into the local micro grid there. And they're – the inverters – so we have no storage capacity. And there's no net metering law, so we're basically – if we're not using some of that electricity, we're getting it right back to the local cooperative, and free of charge.
But it really has lowered our cost there. This is a place we put on lunch programs with the seniors. It's really hard, always, to meet that budget. So lowering our energy cost through solar PV has really been helpful. And we're looking at replicating that more in certain communities. But as everyone knows, solar is so site specific, you really have to do your analysis up front, like we did in Kake, where they have a good – it was a perfect site. Perfect southeast exposure, and no shading.
Randy Manion: Excellent. Next question. There used to be really useful maps online of geothermal resources on tribal lands. This person can't get to them anymore. Where can they find that? Or an updated version.
Lizana Pierce: So this is Lizana. I think that the Energy Atlas on the NREL website does have data layers for tribal lands, and maybe Emma can you confirm that?
Emma Elgqvist: Yes. I know they constantly work to update and refine the maps available. It could have been the map there was replaced by a newer version. We can get the links here, and send those out to the participants after the webinar.
Lizana Pierce: Right. I might also say we have been working on not just technical potential but technical economic and market potential research. And hopefully that will be done at the end of the summer, and culminate into a sort of interactive online map as well. That gets sort of more realistic. Potential for various resources, as opposed to just the technical potential. So, stay tuned.
Shawn Eshley: And just one more comment on that. This is Shawn Eshley from NREL who – the old geothermal maps were replaced with the geothermal prospectors. So you can just Google geothermal prospector, it should bring you there, and it's kind of an interactive map for geothermal in the US.
Randy Manion: All right, next question. SAM addresses geothermal power, but there are other important uses for geothermal energy, such as greenhouse heating, food, timber, and feed drying process heat, space heating. How do tribal groups get that information?
Lizana Pierce: This is Lizana. There's a wealth, massive amounts of information on the website, on low-temp geothermal applications. And so I think through NREL, through a variety of sources, I think if you Google that information, it's pretty prevalent. Or if you want to send some of us an email, we can track down some specific links.
Randy Manion: Okay. Let's see what other questions we have here. This may be a two part question. Let me read the first part that I can see. Is this sort of back end conversation an element that can be integrated with upgrading markets as shown? So let me go to the – all right. Lots of attention is focused on food waste and food rescue. And end of this process, _____ remaining organics be converted to RNG and CCHP fertilizer? Does DOE Tribal Program have any programs right now that connect the front end food waste with the market?
Lizana Pierce: So this is Lizana. The Office of Indian Energy doesn't, but again, there's tons of research on food waste, _____ _____ and products and things like that as well out there. But we don't have any specific programs for that.
Craig Moore: This is Craig here in Southeast Alaska. Kind of a related comment. I might make it over – in our small communities, some small as 200 people, food is a big issue. Obviously we have salmons, and our local subsistence foods, but to try to – you don't have any supermarkets or anything like that available to you, you're on a remote island community. So handling our food is important. _____ _____ the waste, I mean organic waste will often be put back into – mulched and put back into compost, _____ _____ back in for gardens.
We recently put quite a bit of effort into using biomass, wood, to help heat greenhouses. That's become really popular. In fact, working with some state agencies, we're actually putting out a biomass heated greenhouse manual. Which is really important in our cold winter climates up here. We can actually grow fresh vegetables year round. Using biomass heating. And some cases, geothermal – in Southeast Alaska, we don't have access to geothermal. So food sustainability is just a big topic up here in Southeast Alaska, and it really – we can't spend a lot of energy money, dollars, on that, but we're finding ways to make it happen. And that's an exciting thing for communities to get involved in, too.
Randy Manion: Okay. Next question. What were some of your obstacles during the planning and implementation? Again, James, this is for both James and Craig.
James Alexie: Go ahead, Craig.
Craig Moore: Well. In our region, because there's no roads connecting our communities, the logistics of getting out to each community can be expensive. And just setting things up. The solution for that of course was to employ all our tribal partners, and hire some local guys. And train them up. So they can stay in that community. That was our solution to that. We were able to use – bring in many, many different partners, just to help us out in our efforts. As I mentioned, the logistics, expensive. We have banks that were even willing to contribute some money to our efforts.
The school districts, the heath organizations, various other agencies around the state, it takes a lot of people to really pull it off. We were fortunate to have access to some professional trainers, like Markham George, who is a nationally known cold climate maritime climate expert. Who was willing to work with us to help train up our local folks. So just getting equipment out to the communities to test homes, that was a challenge, too. When you got to take them out by a small float plane, or take them by boat.
James Alexie: This is James. For us, there were two sort of logistics aspects we needed to get over. The first is we're now only – not only in a small metropolitan area, like Spokane and Coeur d'Alene, but we're in a small town southeast of those locations. And one thing they created was what I'm going to call lack of competitiveness in terms of there's only one big grocery store refrigeration installer, and buyer. Distributor. And so for us, trying to get more bids from companies in Seattle or Montana or Boise or even Utah, it just created – it wasn't cost competitive for those companies to come out here to a small town grocery store. It's not as if we're a large footprint grocery store, like you see in most metropolitan areas.
So I think it was a little cost prohibitive for them to be a little more competitive. The second aspect, I mentioned earlier, was we're in a small town, and the energy company is a city, which is a city council, and they don't have just programs in place, and ready. So you can't just say oh great I want to – I'm going to improve this, can I have that rebate you _____ _____ all businesses. It's one of those you have to really work with the city and try and hope some of their funding isn't already allocated to another project, or that they're going to be wanting to go ahead and work with you on it.
So Bonneville Power was really helpful with that, really instrumental in stepping in and kind of being the face for everybody and saying hey, here's a really good project, it's great for the community, great for all community members, and we think we can develop a program, find the funding, and even in some cases Bonneville Power will even be willing to transfer funding from another location. So we were fortunate enough to have really good relationships already in place with organizations like Bonneville Power, that made the project a little bit easier. But those were the two obstacles for us. Again, I can't imagine what it's like in Southeast Alaska. So.
Randy Manion: Okay. Next question. If I'm interested in utilizing the capabilities of REopt, how can I work with DOE and NREL to have an analysis completed?
Lizana Pierce: So this is Lizana, and I'll take that one. If you're a tribe or tribal entity, we have a un-request technical assistance. You can find that on our website. And it's an online request form. We'll evaluate that. Your request. And go from there. Which would include potentially support from the laboratory, and DOE as well. And could include REopt analysis, depending on the need. So I urge you. If you need assistance, we have that available, no cost, make the request, and we'll to the best of our abilities try to assist you in it.
Randy Manion: Okay. Next question. How do we get training on the prescreening and screening tools that were presented today?
Emma Elgqvist: A lot of these tools, the Federal Energy Management Program, FEMP, provides training for a lot of these tools. Much of what I presented on today was from one of those trainings. And so I can grab the links for those trainings and send those out to the group. Additionally, for SAM, the System Advisory Model, there's training, and training materials on that website. And when the REopt web tool goes live, there will be training materials and documentation on there as well.
Lizana Pierce: And there is a lot of resources. There's training. The Office of Indian Energy has provided some SAM training in the past as well. But for some of the more sophisticated – or if you're further along in your project development and need some high fidelity assistance in that regard, again, put in the technical assistance request, and we'll go from there.
Randy Manion: Okay. I think that's the end of the questions. Let me just look at it one more time. Think that's it. Up here, we show the upcoming webinars. The next one is – What Energy Project is Right for My Tribe? I want to thank Lizana, Emma, James, and Craig for excellent presentations. And the audience for participating again in today's webinar. With that, we'll see you next month. And this concludes today's webinar. Thank you.
Lizana Pierce: Thanks, everybody.
Craig Moore: Thank you all.
Emma Elgqvist: Thanks.
James Alexie: Thank you.
[End of Audio]