In Balance Green Consulting Celebrates 15 years!

Andy and Jennifer in 2010 – 2 years in business, realizing they needed a website with photos!

Last month marked 15 years since Andy Pease and Jennifer Rennick established In Balance Green Consulting in San Luis Obispo. In recognition of the milestone, we took a few minutes to ask for their reflections on the origins of the firm and what brought them here.

How did you two first start working together?

Back in 2005, we were both out on our own, Jennifer doing residential architecture and energy modeling, and Andy doing commercial architecture and green building consulting. We found that our clients were interested in having a full scope of energy performance and green building, so we started collaborating on projects. We worked well together and formalized a partnership in 2008.

Where did the name come from?

We spent time brainstorming and the word “Balance” kept coming up – the balance of ecology, the work-life balance with our young families, and the balance of competing needs for a project to become reality, including budget, schedule, design and environmental goals. Our connection to “balance” was also visceral, Jennifer from rock climbing and Andy from gymnastics; balance is both meditative and empowering.

How did you grow from there?

There was a learning curve on running a business, for sure. We made classic rookie mistakes, like we would get busy and forget to keep up with marketing, then would have to ramp up again. But we had some great projects and slowly grew. We were both working in our living rooms then, but as we added staff, that gets awkward, so a few years later, we moved into office space. Like any business, we adjust our services to the changing market, most recently taking on more education and training roles, but we still have our core services for energy performance modeling, LEED and other certifications, commissioning and overall green building.

Any final reflections?

Andy and Jennifer, 2023, with Tatiana, Michelle, Soham and Grant.

We love our work and both feel so lucky to work with each other and our great team!

Saving Water as an Effective Way to Save Energy

With historic rainfall — over 200% of average in both SLO and Santa Barbara Counties — and more than full local reservoirs, water is feeling relatively free and easy. But getting clean water to your tap is anything but free. At a variety of scales, energy is used to pump, clean, distribute, and heat our water. And it’s more energy than you might think!

Most of California’s energy consumption associated with water use comes from heating water for industrial processes (35%) and residential uses (42%), but about 12% is associated just with water operations — conveyance, groundwater pumping, treatment and distribution.

Conveyance is the process of channeling water from its source, which mostly relies on gravity. However, places like Southern California where water is delivered from the north or from the Colorado river have considerable pump energy embedded in conveyance when water needs to traverse mountain passes.

When surface water isn’t available (e.g. drought years) our state relies much more on groundwater pumping. That pumping accounts for up to 46% of the statewide water supply during dry years. In addition to being energy intensive, it can also have additional unwanted effects, such as subsidence, or the gradual sinking of land. And while groundwater is renewable, that process is lengthy, requiring sufficient rain and time to percolate down through soil to underwater “basins”. This year’s rain may be next year’s groundwater, but depending on the depth of the basin it can take years or decades to recharge.

Capturing stormwater and recycled water are popular alternatives to avoid groundwater pumping and allow the groundwater more time to recharge. They both need energy-intensive treatment to get rid of pollutants before becoming usable in landscape settings. For a less energy-intensive option, rainwater capture and reuse or laundry-landscape reuse of water for irrigation are ways that individuals can reduce their draw on state- and city-wide water – and energy! – resources.

As the climate continues to change, periods of drought and periods of rain are anticipated to become more extreme, and we’ll need additional energy for pumping in drier conditions and treatment of stormwater when there are larger storms. So, conserving water isn’t just about shortages during droughts but also about reducing overall energy consumption.

We’ve got more to come on this topic:  Check the 3C-REN website soon for our upcoming online Zero Net Carbon Design Series, which will focus on the Energy-Water Nexus as one of five main topics.



NEM 3.0 and the Future of PV Energy in California

For those who follow the solar industry, you may be hearing a lot about the upcoming switch from NEM 2.0 to NEM 3.0 and its potential impacts on renewable energy installations in California. The impacts are substantial and reflect a shifting strategy by the State in its pursuit of zero net carbon.

With over 32,000 MW of solar power installed in California – representing almost 25% of the state’s electricity and enough to power roughly 8.4 million homes – the issue of when we generate and use electricity is increasingly more urgent to focus on than simply adding more renewable energy to the grid.

To explain in more detail, Net Energy Metering (NEM) is the system by which investor-owned utilities like PG&E and So Cal Edison account for the 2-directional supply of electricity to homes and businesses that have photovoltaic (PV) panels. If you have PV panels at home, you likely generate more energy during the day than you're using, so the utility company buys the 'extra' electricity and feeds it into the grid.

Under the current NEM 2.0 and older NEM 1.0, you get paid pretty well for that electricity, so PVs have had a nice return on investment. Under NEM 3.0, which takes effect April 14, the 'buy back' rate for electricity generated in the middle of the day plummets by nearly 75%, because the utility companies have an oversupply when the sun is shining. The situation reverses in the evening and at night, when the sun is down and we're home charging our cars, turning on lights, and running our appliances. This swing in demand from the grid is often referred to as the “duck curve”.

You can see that in the time period 9am – 3pm, the net draw on the system is relatively low (and lower every year), compared to the evening hours. That's why our electric rates are most expensive from 4:00 PM - 9:00 PM. And this is where batteries come in.

If your project won’t make the mid-April deadline to get grandfathered into NEM 2.0, your best bet under NEM 3.0 will be to go ahead and install PVs, but also include battery storage. The 'extra' electricity generated during the day will be sent to your battery and reserved for your own use in the evening when rates are most expensive, which is how you'll optimize a return on the investment. A bonus is you'll have resiliency if and when the power goes out!