Boots on the Ground: Overcoming Staff Shortages to Work with Utilities and Industries

摘要

In 2005 Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) began to ramp up its industrial sectoractivities to meet increasing annual energy conservation goals (resource acquisition). Over thenext three years, it became obvious that barriers existed to acquiring the resource and assistingindustries. BPA then pursued a Best Practices study, which identified various barriers at thedistribution utility, industrial facility and within its own organization.The one key barrier BPA staff worked to remove was the lack of dedicated, focusedengineers to work exclusively with industrial facilities. BPA engineers were a shared commodityamong these sectors: industrial, commercial, agriculture, and federal. BPA also had a cap onhiring internal staff; therefore, BPA decided to hire a prime contractor with industrial experienceto work collaboratively on the design and implementation of a new program model.During that four-month collaboration, we saw the importance of having program staffwith skills such as: technical experience, sector experience (e.g., utility or industry), relationshipand communication skills. Within its first year, the Energy Smart Industrial (ESI) program hasbeen able to ramp up the third-party (contracted) to 27 FTE1. BPA contracted and pays for thethird-party directly. The utility pays for the reimbursement incentives with the industry. BPA,through its program partner, was able to hire talented staff from other industrial market segmentsand quickly educate and train them on energy efficiency approaches and practices.