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The California Municipal Utilities Association (CMUA) recently honored the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) for a joint program with the Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) that provides free energy and water efficiency upgrades for income-qualifying residents and multi-family residential buildings. The program has helped thousands of low-income Angelenos reduce their energy and water use and save on their utility bills.
The CMUA 2018 Resource Efficiency and Community Service Award honors innovative and effective approaches to serving local community needs. The joint Enhanced Energy Savings Assistance Program (ESAP), is structured around an existing statewide program that requires investor-owned utilities (IOUs) to provide eligible low-income residents of multi-family buildings with energy and water efficiency measures at no cost. As a public municipal utility, LADWP elected to join with SoCalGas to enhance the existing ESAP with additional electricity and water saving measures, and to reach all eligible customers in the agencies’ shared service areas to increase energy savings.
“LADWP is pleased to accept the 2018 award for Best Community Service Program – Large Utility from the CMUA,” said David Jacot, director of LADWP Efficiency Solutions. “By combining our utilities’ services, we are offering a more comprehensive package of programs that save natural resources and better serve the needs of our communities.”
Efficiency measures for 11,900 low-income, multi-family units in Los Angeles, including about 3,500 units of public housing, were installed in 2016 and 2017 through the joint Enhanced ESAP. The anticipated annual savings should include over 93 million gallons of water, 4.6 megawatt-hours of electricity as well as 170,000 therms of natural gas. Additionally, the program also provided efficiency education to residents, helping them understand the importance of saving water and energy so they can reduce their use even further, thereby benefitting themselves and the environment.
“Keeping energy bills low is extremely important to our customers, so we are happy to work with LADWP to help people improve their homes’ energy efficiency,” said Dan Rendler, SoCalGas Director of Customer Programs and Assistance. “We congratulate our colleagues at LADWP and look forward to continuing our joint programs to help even more Angelenos reduce their energy use in the future.”
The joint Enhanced ESAP has other unique features to further the benefits of the program. To assist as many qualified customers as possible, the program reaches out directly to affordable housing providers, such as the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA). HACLA had already reached out to LADWP and SoCalGas to find ways to reduce their energy and water use, and greenhouse gas emissions associated with its housing complexes; the joint Enhanced ESAP was a benefit to all concerned.
LADWP is also pairing the program with their existing Commercial Direct Install (CDI) Program to install energy efficiency measures in the common housing areas for their community rooms, hallways, laundry rooms, lobbies as well as outdoor parking areas. The CDI Program has been enhanced with specific electric efficiency measures, such as installing energy-saving light bulbs, smart power strips and LED night lights. On-going standard measures include weather stripping, caulking, low-flow faucet aerators and showerheads and building repairs to seal gaps for better insulation.
The joint Enhanced ESAP is one of 17 joint programs made available in the Los Angeles area through the three-year agreement partnership between LADWP and SoCalGas which as renewed in November 2017. The partnership allows both entities to leverage their existing programs to reach more of their shared customers and increase overall savings of electrical energy, water and natural gas.
