Friday, July 24, 2009

Energy Advisor

Having spent the last month on board with CSG, I have to admit it has been a pretty fast track. There is no doubt the program is working and the response has been good. Nothing like a cash incentive to bring the customers out of the woodwork. While there are several power distributors on line throughout the TVA grid, currently KUB is the only PD in the E. TN region using CSG auditors. It is a daunting challenge when you look at the numbers. Let's imagine that 50% of the homes in the TVA grid make the call and schedule an audit. That's roughly 4.5 Million homes. The auditors are targeted to see 3 homes a day. Given holidays and sick leave suppose they work 200 days. That's 600 homes per year per rater. One rater would take 7500 years to see them all. 100 raters would take 75 years. 1000 raters would take 7.5 years. There are about 190,000 homes within the KUB umbrella. It would take me 316.66 years. Methuselah where's your blower door? You get the point, there needs to be A LOT more raters. I am not aware of the rater training schedule for CSG but I think there will be more auditor trainings before long. This is the first wave of green collar jobs everyone has been hoping for. The energy conservation repairs that follow will be the second. Every home I have seen needs air sealing, insulation and duct repair. Many need HVAC equipment upgrades. This is really good news for a dormant construction industry. I guess I always knew it woild take utility incentives to get the pubic interested in conservation, it is nice to see it starting to work.