James Tuleya, an energy coach, shares with us his approach to helping his four hundred clients cut their electricity and gas bills. He talks about lighting and just unplugging stuff when not in use. Most importantly, he emphasizes that his service is free because it’s paid for by the utility company. In part 2 of this series, James explains why this is the case.

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TRAVIS:  Today we have James Tuleya, and he’s an energy coach in the Bay Area. Hi, James.

JAMES TULEYA:  Hey, Travis. How are you?

TRAVIS:  I’m doing pretty good. We’d like to start out our interview here always asking this question. What was the first thing you remember wanting to be when you’re growing up?

JAMES TULEYA:  I remember wanting to be a businessman like my dad. My dad was always working and I just wanted to emulate him. I didn’t really think too much about anything special. I was just focused on school and where it came to a career, the only real example I had was my father.

TRAVIS:  Oh, okay. You wanted to be a businessman. What do you do now and how did you get into it?

JAMES TULEYA:  Now, as you mentioned, I’m an energy coach with a program that we run to help residential customers save energy, helps them understand their energy use and helps them save energy. I’m an energy coach for that program as well as the partner person. I’m the Community Programs Director. I also collaborate with cities, towns, and counties in the Bay Area to work with them, to try to get the word out, to help more people know that this program is available to them.

TRAVIS:  In our last podcast, we talked to Chris Hunt who was also an energy coach and he explained in pretty detail what it is, but for the listeners who didn’t listen to that, can you kind of go over a little bit about what an energy coach does and what’s your day in life like?

JAMES TULEYA:  Sure. As an energy coach, I’m assigned to a set of clients. I have about 400 clients around the Bay Area mostly in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, and Silicon Valley here. I help them understand the analysis that the HomeIntel program does, the analysis of their smart meter data book gas and electrics. It breaks down their electric use in categories. One of the key things I do is to help make sure that they understand what that analysis is telling them about what their using in their home for different types of end uses or gas and electricity. Then, what categories are those that they seemed to be wasting the most energy and so therefore, that’s the area they need to focus on.

JAMES TULEYA:  Then, I take it from there in that level of understanding to help them understand how to reduce that energy waste and how to address that. It’s anywhere from, almost everybody. I’m talking through all the lighting in their home. A lot of people have some efficient light bulbs either compact fluorescent light bulbs or LEDs. LEDs are only about twice as efficient as CFL, incandescent lights or … LEDs are about six to ten times more efficient than incandescent or halogens. We get a big improvement when people went to compact fluorescents but then, you can improve even further to LED. These days, it’s best to just go straight to LEDs.

JAMES TULEYA:  Lighting is something that everybody has. I work often in general rules of thumb to help people understand practical things that they can do and relative to lights, I usually talk with them about, just thinking about all the lights in their home and what do they use most often. They can either make a very specific list to be very methodical about it or just think through, “Okay, in this room, what do I use most often?” The point of that is that everything that uses energy, and the amount of money that someone spends on that energy is dependent on how efficient is that to light, like a light bulb or a refrigerator. Then, how long do they run it.

JAMES TULEYA:  Another very broadly applicable thing that I talk through with homeowners and renters is devices that they rarely use–even forever. We walk around their house. I usually visit about one out of five of the client’s. The other ones I work with on the phone or over e-mail. But, when I’m visiting a house, I talk through with them and walk through, and look at everything plugged in; all their electronics, various things around the house. Some people have some very strange devices, air purifiers and there’s all sorts of medical devices. But, almost everybody’s got a few things like old TVs and other things, old stereo equipment that they’ve got maybe in a guest room or something.

JAMES TULEYA:  If they’re not using something, then, it’s a good opportunity for them to just unplug it. But unplugging isn’t always convenient. So, when some relative comes to visit, and they have the TV in the guest room unplugged, you don’t want to have to reach behind a cabinet to have to plug it back in. Another way to deal with that, the equivalent of unplugging something, is putting it on power strip or a surge protector power strip, and putting the switch somewhere they could get at it with their finger, so they don’t have to reach around, bend over, or whatever just make it very convenient. So, that they continue doing that. So, they can turn it off and on only when someone is going to be using it.

JAMES TULEYA:  You see that in some rooms in people’s houses. They’ve got stuff that’s just not used very much. Then, we actually find things and some electronic gear in people’s old cabinets that they haven’t used in five years, and it’s fairly common. Just getting them to unplug that, and then they can decide on their own what they’re going to do about it, sell it or give it away, or something. Those are some common things that they do.

TRAVIS:  That makes sense. I guess, as a client, their experience is the following: they sign up for this thing and it’s free to them, right? That’s what Chris was saying the last time.

JAMES TULEYA:  That’s right. The program is free and our services are free even if I come to the house to help them, because we get paid by the utility company. We’re running the program for them. We get paid based on how much a client saves energy. The more they save, the more we get paid. The customers don’t have to pay. The utility company pays because the program is part of the utility set of energy efficiency programs that they’re required to run by the state government. The California Public Utilities Commission requires all the utilities to run energy efficiency programs, and it actually serves as a bonus program for them, so if they need their energy efficiency in all programs, they actually earn extra profit.

Continue to part 2 and part 3 of this interview to learn about how to immediately save on your gas or electric bills. James share his experience helping over four hundred households in the Bay Area.