In part 1 and part 2, James talked about how energy coaching is free and easy for Californians because it’s paid for by the utility company. He knows it inside out from his days running programs in Customer Energy solutions at PG&E. In this final part of the interview, James shares with us few big myths and tips he learned from his experience with his four hundred clients.

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TRAVIS:  Okay. This is interesting. We plan to write a few articles about myths around energy use. One of the ones I learned was that when … just a simple case like heating up water. People usually fill up the kettle and then put it on the stove. Then, I think about, “How should I heat up the water? Which one’s the most efficient?” In reality, it’s just the amount of water you’re heating up that matters.

TRAVIS:  If you just heat up what you will use, that’s the best way. So, I learned a new trick of using my tea cup to pour into the kettle what I will drink. I thought that was so easy. As an energy coach, can you share some myths about lowering energy or energy use that you see in the field that people are like “What?”

JAMES TULEYA:  Yeah. One of the big ones is turning down thermostat in your home during the winter and not have to heat it so much. It was all about the insulation, the building, the windows, the air-conditioner, the furnace, and what could you do about that. I’ve run into a couple, more than a couple of clients that they’re trying to save energy or “be good” about their energy use by leaving their thermostat turned down, so that they’re shivering all the time.

JAMES TULEYA:  In some cases, they do that so much that then they put in little space heaters or move space heaters around their house that are electric-resistant space heaters. They turn down their central furnace which is a much more efficient system than portable electric space heaters. When people start to use more than one electric space heater, it really starts to add up. Keeping the thermostat turned up one or two degrees might actually be a better thing to do than keeping it turned down, because then you don’t feel like you’ve got to put very inefficient space heaters somewhere.

JAMES TULEYA:  The other thing related to that is that some people think that their energy cost and their bills are all related to how much they spend on their air-conditioning and their kind of furnace. In the moderate climate that we have here in the San Francisco Bay Area, that’s actually not that big a deal relative to some other things going on in their home like the water heater, or even more so, all the what’s called plug load, all the stuff in someone’s house that’s plugged in. It’s about not only the appliances, like the old refrigerator in the garage that many people have, but also all the electronics all around the house that constantly are using energy whether you’re home or not.

JAMES TULEYA:  It’s all, what they call vampire loads or phantom loads. I usually see across the board, 30% to 50% of their overall energy bill is this always-on electric or idle load that’s a combination of all these vampire loads from electronics and their refrigerators that they have all over the house. The myth is again, the fact that the turning down the thermostat actually isn’t going to save you so much money. They really need to look at that old fridge or all the plug loads and the vampire loads that are adding up across the 50 or 100 different devices they have across their house.

TRAVIS:  Wow. Well, thanks for sharing those. You mentioned, one was in winter, people think that you should be lowering the thermostat by one or two degrees. Then, when it gets too cold, they use these space heaters that you at Target or Walmart, or get from Amazon. These things are actually a super wasteful.

JAMES TULEYA:  That’s right.

TRAVIS:  You also mentioned that people think there’s something wrong with the house and the expensive stuff like air-conditioning system. However, in fact, a lot of this waste is going to plug loads.

JAMES TULEYA:  Yeah.

TRAVIS:  Thanks for sharing that. Hey, James, I also see here that you’re quite involved in the community. I think that’s a really important aspect of your life. Can you tell us about your community efforts? It seems like you’ve been quite involved for a long time. Why do you do it, and what do you do?

JAMES TULEYA:  I’d like to be involved not only in doing work, but also being engaged in the community. One fundamental reason is that I was raised, I think, with the importance of giving back to the community. I’ve had a lot of opportunities in my life. I was fortunate, and as they call it, privileged in many ways. Dad was successful. He was the first in his generation to go to college, but all his brothers and sisters went to college. So, that helped me a lot just to get it started at a higher point, if you will, in being successful in life.

JAMES TULEYA:  Combined with that, giving back to the community was something that my parents both did. I also picked more of that up when I went to school at Stanford. There’s a quote from the founder, the wife of Leland Stanford, the railroad baron. Actually, it was Leland Stanford himself. He said, “I’m founding this university in the hope and belief that boys and girls can be educated, and that men and women prepared and willing to grapple successfully with practicalities of life, and thus prove a blessing to themselves and the world.”

JAMES TULEYA:  That really hit home with me. I had a chance to go to a great school and had opportunities in my life, and the purpose there was not only to benefit myself but to do what I could and use my capabilities to help people and improve things in the world. One of the things I’ve been doing the last 10 to 12 years is working on climate change challenges. Now, with global warming, it’s increasingly changing our climate and creating more intense storms and problems across the world, and all the science is telling that things are going to get a lot worse if we don’t change.

JAMES TULEYA:  I’ve spent a lot of my time in the last 10 to 12 years working on what can I do locally and regionally, primarily to address that. I’ve been involved in my local community here in Sunnyvale. I was vice chair of our Citizen Advisory Committee working on our climate action plan update, and I’m also the chair of Carbon-Free Silicon Valley where as a local leader in Sunnyvale. I collaborate with other local leaders across different cities in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties to share what we’re doing in each city and learn best practices of how to work with our city councils and duplicate efforts.

JAMES TULEYA:  A few weeks ago, I went to Menlo Park City Council meeting to help some local residents talk about the importance of advancing the reach codes to make building more efficient and more electric, and use less natural gas to try to drive solution forward for addressing climate change because we, in Silicon Valley, have the opportunity to move further faster. We need to show the way for other communities that are less advantaged than our own. We’ve got more money here and can show the way and lay a path to show others around the state and the country on what can be done for addressing climate change that isn’t necessarily a sacrifice. It actually saves money and creates jobs.

TRAVIS:  Wow, that’s inspiring. We need more people to be involved in the community, work with climate change, and help people through something like energy efficiency–which is accessible to people. I used to live in the Bay Area and there are more people like you in the Silicon Valley. If they want to be an energy coach, do you have any advice on how to become one?

JAMES TULEYA:  One of the steps would be to talk to one of the existing coaches in our program, to learn more about what we do and to get a sense of some more of the details of what’s involved. In the grand tradition of looking for other opportunities, it’s informational interviewing. I’m sure that Chris and I would be both happy to jam with somebody that might be interested in being an energy coach. As you were mentioning, one very nice thing about it is that I get to set my own schedule. When I worked with PG&E, I used to have to get on the train and go up to the city every day, you know, more of the “nine-to-five job.” It’s a little longer than that. The commute is a long time.

JAMES TULEYA:  The nice thing is I focus more locally, in my own county, and just work. I decide when I’m going to visit a client or go meet a partner, and I get to move around in the middle of the day instead of scheduling myself during rush hour. But if someone’s interested, it’s really just helping people. Some of the concepts in what’s needed is not all that hard to understand.

JAMES TULEYA:  You just have to have an appreciation for working with people and the desire to help people. Certainly, it helps to have some background in the energy industry, but it’s not critical. It certainly helps to have some passion for what the end result is to helping people in general and helping with the, you know, some of the end results as you were describing were to help address climate change and reduce energy waste. It’s part of the big problem we’re all going to need to be working on soon, if not already.

TRAVIS:  All right. James, thanks for your time. I have one last question to kind of leave for the listeners, kind of a little tip from you. You yourself is a Californian resident. You understand the space; I’m curious what is one thing that if you could tell us that you personally do for energy use that you would like to share with the listeners?

JAMES TULEYA:  One of the things that I do–or I should say–I did, and that I look forward every client that I visit, is to make sure that the water heater isn’t turned up too high. I try to find just that sweet spot where it’s just hot enough that everybody in the house gets the hot showers that they want, and they don’t run out of hot water. It’s the temperature they want. But, half of the homes that I visit have their water heater temperature turned up too high. The easy way to check to see if yours is too high is simple. Just turn on the hot water at any sink, and put your hand under it–preferably the back of your hand. See if you can keep your hand under that hot water all the way on.

JAMES TULEYA:  If it’s scalding your hand and you got to pull your hand away, then, what that means is that you’re heating the water up to a point where in order to take a shower or wash your hand, you’re going to have to mix cold water into it. So, why did you heat it up further than it needed to be in the first place, which is wasting energy? You’re wasting gas or electricity to heat it more than it needs to be. So, it’s a simple thing that everybody can do is just to turn down your water heater. Turn it down a whole notch, and see if that works for everybody in the house.

JAMES TULEYA:  If it doesn’t work, then turn it back up half a notch. It’s a very easy thing to experiment on. Most people know where their water heater is, and there’s usually a little dial. Just find that sweet spot where on a regular daily basis, everybody’s happy.

TRAVIS:  Wow. I love it. I love it. I’m going to go check mine out. Okay. James, again thank you for your time. We really appreciate it. I know you’re quite a busy person helping 400 clients. I really appreciate your time, and I’m sure the listeners do as well.