the following podcast is produced or sponsored by a community member the content views and opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not reflect those of v m c or the town of belmont b m c welcomes your comments call us at six one seven four eight four two four four three or email us at access at belmont media dot org hello everyone welcome to community conversations i'm your host roger c our local publicly owned utility about light is in the midst of significant change some of that change is flowing from occurrences in the broader world some of that change is occurring because of things that are going on internal to life and we have a staff person with mel with us today becca keen who is the energy resources analyst for about like has joined us in the b m c studios thanks for coming over becca thanks roger i say you're the energy resources analyst what does that title tell us well it's a little bit misleading because i'm not just doing analysis of energy data i do a little more than that so i handle all our energy programming so things like our plants rebate program and all that stuff i also can advise when people have questions about their bills why am i using so much energy and what can i do they can talk to me customer service is also great for i was in the role of communications coordinator and then i moved into this role about two years ago ok before we get started i want to do one disclaimer here for our listeners and that is to let people know that i'm on the screening committee for the new general manager for belmont light so i would like to stay away from talking about anything that might conceivably relate to or affect that  screening process yeah sure let's talk about energy usage reduction programs that's sort of a a mouthful but it's what when i got started in this business we used to just call it energy conservation but at the moment like puts a lot of effort into helping people learn how to reduce their energy consumption right right and we try to provide a variety of options for people to do so so typically when you think of utility programs you will think of like i already mentioned the appliance rebate program but we offer a lot of different things like we're really endorsing electric vehicles right now and you're going at first think that that's an energy conservation measure right because actually when you are electrifying something you're using more energy from us but we consider that energy in our electricity in new england to be pretty clean so compared to other fuel types like oil or things like that so when we are pushing things like heat pumps and evey's we are at the same time being mindful of the arm and arm and all benefits and i mention that because i get that as a common question why are you pushing  that drive electricity up yes it does but there is a rationale behind that and roger you know about that from being on the energy committee so the energy committee has been pretty involved with electric vehicles and heat pumps well let's talk about that so is it given that we frequently hear that one of the causes of greenhouse gas emissions is generation the generation of electricity why do we as an environmental policy what to promote increased electricity production through electric vehicles question so right now and you've been involved with this very actively we are working on greening our portfolio a we've spent a lot of the time a lot of time on in the past year with the energy committee and with our advisory committee and the board of selectmen talking about where does our park come from and how can we make it cleaner so one thing we've been doing is  passing up working on and passing a new power supply policy that says that we should be achieving and maybe even exceeding the state mandates around renewables so if you are actively working on cleaning up our portfolio you can hopefully feel better about using electricity as a fuel source as opposed to something like oil which is a little more fossil fuel have your emissions happy rather so right so what i'm hearing that light purchases is getting cleaner cleaner in general in new england that's true and light is making a particular effort to i don't want to say clean up its act but to get greener you can say that in then secondly whenever you substitute a greener electricity production for gasoline powered vehicles the substitution is cleaner because burning gasoline is about as dirty as particular why is it just thinking about so as part of my job to think about what can we do in belmont to make a real difference we know the residents here cure care about being environmentally sensitive and conscientious so we are always specific efforts and let's focus on the electric vehicles for just a minute because are you folks doing or offering particular incentives are yes i want to buy or not even want to yet i'm interested in thinking about buying an electric vehicle yeah how does bella fit into that process so much like what you would do as we are we were actively holding a series of events over the last year a lot of them you probably heard about them there with belmont drives electric and that group was made up of belmont light a couple of our staff and also some residents in town that are really passionate about u v s and then members of the energy committee as well and so belmont drives electric you can just google that or call us and you'll reach one of the resident coaches someone who owns an electric vehicle or knows a lot about it and will give you advice on the electric vehicles would be beneficial in that i would drive my vehicle to work or i would drive it during the day and then i would come home park it in my garage or in my driveway at night and then recharge it overnight when other people are not using electricity definitely and so that's where it's incentives come in we will actually give you money when you charge smart like that if you come home and you are waiting a little bit after the rush of people of the high demand period is over if you choose to charge your vehicle i think it starts at ten pm till now eleven am we will give you a fifteen percent rebate on your electricity that you used to charge charge during that period so let's let people know that because you know that's actually an advance for me what you don't want to do is to come home at six o'clock when everybody else is coming home in flip pm and actually i misspoke earlier we just changed the program so you would get eight eight dollar rebate per month last year it was fifteen percent but we looked at the data of the program we figured out you'd make it make better if we were just giving you a fixed  dollars so if you were to go buy and u v and you programmed it to just charge overnight you'd see an eight dollars credit on your bill every month after signing up with us and you can get charging stations where you can preset it that you wouldn't have to exactly or most vehicles while you can program that way to either one yeah so do smart so either way you don't have to go out into the cold at ten o'clock tonight and flip a switch to say i'm  right center exactly you'll see that there's two chargers there for dedicated parking spots and they're usually available so that is one thing you can rely on and also free for two hours charge you do have to pay for parking but the electricity is free for charge downtown so you can go down to plug and do your shopping you know and then when you come back hopefully or charge your car's charge that said there's also charging infrastructure growing across the state and across the country too so the technology is pretty sophisticated in the cars it all mapped out all the charges for you so you do have to be a little mindful when you're planning a long trip just make sure  you know where the chargers are and that you have time to stop and get what you need so the range anxiety it is a it is a concern for a lot of people but there's ways around it especially with the technology in the cars is changing a lot there's cars coming out every month that have high ranges for instance nissan's new leaf used to have i think go fifty mile range and now has one hundred fifty so it's changing a lot and i'm an even owner so that's why i'm talking about them so passionately does it make economic sense or they say they're so incredibly expensive oh my they're not actually so because evey's are so great for the environment the state will give you a twenty five hundred rebate right off the bat just to check when you lease or purchase a vehicle and then there's also a federal tax break that's seventy five hundred dollars so that's ten grand right off them a sarpi right there and then through belmont tribes electric we have been negotiating pricing with dealers so that we make sure that we are there as your during the sales process and you'll have transparent pricing and they can somewhat guarantee that you'll get that rate but they've been advertising to us so and then when you think about the cost of gas especially if you drive something with a big tank that amounts to a lot i can tell you how much i've saved over the past year owning and evie it's it's a lot though so if someone call and where they could call me at any point belmont light you could look on the website for my actually i don't think my direct lines on there but just call us and you can connect to me or just google belmont tribe selector and they'll be a phone number and an ok but there's w w w belmont drives electric dot cork ok that'll have all the information it'll tell you it'll layo everything we just talked about why are you be so great for the environment how about the costs what about range anxiety what models are available that's all they're ok yeah let's let's stay in the same general topic area but it seems to me that it may seem a little different but another aspect of strategic electri can replace your central system or you can install one a smaller unit and just have it be supplemental when you want in the summer so we offer some pretty hefty grants for heat pumps because we really like promoting them because they are highly energy efficient so when you're talking about people can conserving they use about a third to fifty percent less than some of the traditional systems out there particularly the older oil systems so if you have one of those out home and you've been thinking of upgrading it you should definitely look into a heat pump you'll save money and emissions so this saving money is i don't want to denigrate oil here but it is what it is people are paying three chief three or four dollars a gallon fuel oil it should still work out because the heat pumps use so much less energy in general the  still there i could actually so we could we have a heat pump program in place right now and what you do is you call sage all the program administrator the information is on our website and they will actually run through all the costs with you so they'll give you a payback period so they'll say hey i'm currently on oil this is how much i spend a month this is what i what i could expect to pay on a heat pump and we'll help you make that choice but usually it works out especially in older houses with older systems so someone who has fuel heating who maybe have in a fuel heating system almost but not quite can be assumed to be pretty all right i would think so nowadays yeah maybe we could put up a link but there's belle malloy talk calm under energy solutions and all of our programs are listed right there and they can just follow the links you get to sage well yeah and in doing it let me get straight in my own mind it's not that they're committing to go in for a heat pump but they're just seeking information in guidance about whether pursuing a heat pump sure makes sense for them definitely we can talk to any point in the process if you've already gone and bought one we can hopefully rebate you afterwards if you bought the right equipment but yeah it's always a good idea to check with us first we will advise you can just say i have this vague idea i'm thinking about doing it and we will tell you why it's best to do it and you give people money oh yes yeah i said with just science will you know it's worth it for us to be promoting this technology so there grants i think they start at fifteen hundred dollars but they go up from there depending on the size of the system in the reason this is good again let me in is because a couple of things again the light is green in its own power sources so just by going to bama like you're getting greener and greener electricity in secondly you're replacing very dirty fuel right with rain or electricity so it's another instance where the increase in electricity use is actually good for the environment right because they use less energy  and they use less energy overall yet said that they were up to fifty percent more efficient stanchion and the other thing you can think about is we are your local utilities so wouldn't you rather be supporting us as opposed to some mega corporation outside bounds right i always think that's kind of a feel good thing to so you mentioned the appliance rebate program light offers are those for residential customers yes and what goes into those these are programs that provide money for people to buy more efficient refrigerators or air conditioners or exactly electric appliances generally  yes and they have to be energy star certified so they have to have passed specific criteria that means that they are giving a lot of will of energy efficiency and so once you go and buy one of those you just go on our website and fill out the application and we will rebate you with fifty to one hundred dollars so it helps a little bit in there are there a series of appliances in particular that you support yeah so we have refrigerators are a big one you probably know that they can be energy hogs on your bill someone customers call up and they say why is my bill so high i often say do you have an old refrigerator and think every if you've got a refrigerator that's even is something maybe we should consider and also d v r and gaming systems they are big energy consumers so i have been thinking about whether we should be thinking about rebating or at least doing some research into the products and seeing what we can do there for people you would never think oh this little box on my t v set is consuming a ton of energy every month they do and if you think about them you're leaving and lawn all the time so one thing you can do is attach it to a power strip and just shut off when you don't need that not a lot of people like doing that but it's something we're going to give a little more thought to because those are becoming more popular so tell me the moment light is  in the business of selling electricity and you make your money it's not that you're making a profit but we're nonprofit you generate your money through the sale of electricity so how does it make sense a great question for an electric utility to support people people's efforts to buy less to electricity it's a great question so first off you just got to remember we are not profit not for profit we have a different business model than some of the other utilities around us which are profit driven but family life we are owned by the town and we are not try and just jack up our sales just to increase our  fact can't do that legally we have a certain margin that we have to maintain and then from there we actually return any over profit to their residence so that said  motivation is just missing for us not to pour not just in it to make to make money bags of money no that's not there so that's one thing secondly if you are reducing consumption systemwide you are lowering our  costs you know at the macro level and that eventually makes its way back to you roger as a ratepayer so if we're saving money by not supplying you energy not buying the power and not sending it over the system then you will ultimat intended to say sure and that is that by using less and less electricity be like department the light as an electric utility actually saves costs and they don't have to buy power they don't there are expenditures that they don't have to make whenever you don't have to incur an expense that eventually that savings doesn't go into somebody's pocket so with the play into programs do you have programs for other than residential customers we don't have an industrial base but we  have we we do have commercial customers there right across the street from star one of our bigger customers and that is another area where we have to offer more programming so we're currently looking at what we can offer commercial customers in the coming year and one thing and one thing we do for residents is offer free home audits so an energy advisor will come in try to identify for you where you can save energy we would like to make that available to commercial customers too and then potentially fund some tailored programming based on how that report comes back that's something we're considering right now there's also lighting rebates businesses can save a lot if they're converting if they're using old incandescent and they haven't replaced them with c f l zarelli d s that might be a place that we can help out too so we're currently looking at that hoping to unveil something very soon and what about the ten as a ten is speaking of lighting  the streetlights i would think would be those are on the agenda as well ok and what about the new buildings such as the high school and even looking down the road  new library a new police station will does belmont light have a role in we will play whatever role the town wants us to so there's been a lot of discussion about putting solar on the new high school or having it be not zero if the town decides that what that's what they want to do we will do everything we can to support that so in terms of research on whether solar is a good option there or whether electrifying is a good option we could definitely help with that ok but we would take our instructions from the town we don't want to insert ourselves and make that decision you know and let's follow up on that that's actually some a good segue into something i wanted to ask you about to because belmont does play a special role that's my word in my phrase in the community as being utility rather than invest your own new till it be that interested in generating a profit for investors exactly so what that means to me as i see the residents as our owners we should be taking all or cues from the community and we try to one thing i try to do is to work with folks like yourself and hear what you guys want us to be doing we don't want to be blindly making decisions and acting like a traditional utility and just hitting those check boxes we want to know we want to know what you want from us so we can give you the best service and it really is that is our motto and we think about it all the time so i'm glad you asked that question  there was what was called a customer satisfaction survey released i believe in december perhaps this fall and one of the things that survey found was that residents of the community said that they would prefer the late pursue community goals over and be best practices of the electric industry does that ring a bell definitely yes i think it just reaffirms something we knew already we we are like other utilities we were out we're in belmont for a reason the decision was made to keep public utility around and one of the best values we can provide is listening to you there's local control so if there's something that the town feels passion about and wants to get done we can help with that and so when you realize the question about new buildings that is that is a role we can play and be helpful i don't think it's the same situation in other towns where there's not a publicly owned utility you're not going to get much traction when you call up one of the big guys and say hey i'm back i like can you tell me if them away is thinking  being involved in this project yes right and they would say what are you talking about yes what does that do for me but we are not like that we are very open i welcome customers to call me all the time so does our customer i think we would both admit they were sort of policy geeks when it comes to energy resource planning strew what do you say to people who when folks like you talk about strategic elect ication and power supply planning in the lake and their response is i really don't care i just when i flip the light switch i want my lights to come up and that's all i care about right what's the what's the answer to that the answer is we are when we are undertaking these efforts anything pertaining to conservation or environmental issues we are very mindful about what we're spending and what we're analyzed before we unveil it and there's budgets every year we are collecting there's actually a line in your rate clock for conservation so we have a strict budget every customer chipping in at the same level and we're not doing anything else with the money so we're not going out there and overspending and we're being very responsible what we're doing that said most programs that we have out there have a strong business case there is a return to all the rate payers to most every program that we have in our roster there are some things that they're like we have to just offer other utilities are offering like massive and things like that that you would always think is there a return for the utility and me as a rate payer but there is a return for the individual customer things like the appliance rebate program we've been talking with back a king who is the energy resources analyst for light you've been listening to community conversations i would like to thank you the listeners for tuning in today you can stream community conversations online at the b m c podcast network at belmont media dot org and you can also find community conversations on i tunes at or by looking for the b m c podcast network thank you for tuning in today i mean community conversations host roger colton i will talk to you again next time