Request for Qualification Opportunity
X / Professional Services ContractConstruction Contract
Service Contract
Material Requirement
Other
Opportunity Title: / Whole House Program
Work Location: / Various PG&E Territories
Deadline to Respond: / Two (2) Weeks After Receipt of RFP
Request for Qualification Description:
1. Background Information
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), incorporated in California in 1905, is one of the largest combination natural gas and electric utilities in the United States. Based in San Francisco, the company is a wholly owned subsidiary of PG&E Corporation.
There approximately 20,000 employees who carry out PG&E’s primary business—the transmission and delivery of energy. The Company provides natural gas and electric service to approximately 14 million people throughout a 70,000-square-mile service area in northern and central California. Our customers include over 20,000 schools, 3,000 hospitals, 20,000 high-tech companies and 700 military facilities. As the primary gas and electric service provider for Central and Northern California, PG&E has impressive size and territory that stretches from Eureka in the north to Bakersfield in the south, and from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Sierra Nevada in the east. PG&E provides electricity to over 4.9 million customers and gas to over 3.9 million customers.
PG&E is determined to expand opportunities which enhance our commitment to diversity, safety, environmental stewardship, and corporate integrity. We anticipate that this evaluation process will provide opportunities for successful firms to expand their business with PG&E and also allow PG&E to realize reductions in costs, both internal and external. We believe this will be an exciting opportunity for PG&E and its current and future suppliers to reshape the way we work together and to improve PG&E’s operations.
2. Project Background
PG&E has a thirty year history of offering energy efficiency programs to Customers, and is seeking to further engage Residential Customers by offering a more holistic approach to residential energy efficiency improvements. The result will be a Program that encourages Contractors and Customers to approach the house as an integrated system rather than a collection of individual and separate.
In this Request for Proposals (RFP), PG&E seeks to implement a Whole House Program that will enable Residential Customers and Contractors to conduct comprehensive home energy retrofits. The Program will: (i) offer both a basic and advanced pathway to participation (described below); (ii) educate Customers on the house-as-a-system concept to encourage behavior changes that increase residential energy efficiency; (iii) educate Contractors on the benefits of learning how to properly sell and install Whole House measures; (iv) offer incentives that influence Customers and Contractors to undertake comprehensive residential retrofits; and (v) coordinate with relevant external funding, financing and workforce education and training efforts at the county, state, and federal levels.
The program will consist of two major components: the statewide Prescriptive Whole House Retrofit Program (PWHRP) and PG&E’s local Whole House Performance Program (WHPP). PWHRP is statewide and will offer Customers and Contractors an easy entry point on the path to home performance. The prescriptive program will allow Customers to reduce energy usage while increasing the energy performance and comfort of their existing homes and minimizing lost opportunities for future comprehensive retrofit options. The Program will also educate Contractors and Customers on the benefits of implementing comprehensive Whole House retrofits on existing buildings that will provide systematic reductions in energy use. PWHRP will help to:
§ Funnel participation from Core Energy Efficiency (EE), Demand Response (DR), distributed generation (e.g. California Solar Initiative) portfolios, and increase awareness through statewide coordinated marketing campaigns, and contribute to education and outreach activities with local government partners;
§ Coordinate with the extensive network of heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) Contractors already participating in IOU programs;
§ Promote completion of retrofits based on preferred building science loading order (described below);
§ Offer an estimated customer incentive of $1,000 to encourage progression along a preferred approach towards comprehensive retrofits;
§ Continuously engage Customers over time as they progress toward a home performance approach;
§ Provide rigorous Quality Assurance and Quality Control, consistent with the Home Performance with ENERGY STAR (HPwES ) Program, for elements completed within the prescriptive Work Scope;
§ Offer a holistic path towards home performance by aggregating key elements of a dwelling into its core elements: building envelope and fixed lighting; heating, cooling and hot water, and appliances;
§ Coordinate with Communities, Local Governments, and allied Third-Parties for outreach on local retrofit and Contractor training opportunities available;
§ Coordinate with local financing opportunities, as appropriate;
§ Define the baseline for existing household energy usage; and
§ Be compatible with Home Energy Rating System (HERS) requirements.
WHPP is a local utility program that will offer Customers a more customized path to home performance than PWHRP. WHPP solutions will require participating Contractors to obtain higher levels of expertise. The Performance Program will require diagnostic “test-in” and “test-out” Whole House assessments consistent with HERS guidelines and the national HPwES program. The test-in assessments will generate a comprehensive Work Scope that must include each measure in the PWHRP package (if not already installed) along with additional measures that are beyond the scope of PWHRP. The test-out assessments will be used to document that specified improvements have been properly sized and installed. Incentives associated with the Performance Programs will be correspondingly higher to reflect the verifiable levels of energy savings. WHPP will build off of the PWHRP and:
§ Require higher levels of Contractor training and qualifications;
§ May utilize a commercially available and approved building simulation software and methodology to model performance sites and estimate energy savings for the project;
§ Establish a project baseline by a “test-in” and “test-out” method compatible with the requirements of California Energy Commission (CEC) HERS assessments;
§ Provide greater gross Customer incentives than PWHRP; and
§ Provide an estimated Customer incentive up to $3,500.
The implementation of PWHRP and WHPP resulting from this RFP shall help PG&E to increase Customer and Community satisfaction by assisting in the successful implementation of Government and Municipal Utility Residential Retrofit Programs.
The implementation shall also include robust reporting and analysis enabling PG&E to:
§ Capture energy savings credit for energy efficiency attribution;
§ Facilitate reporting needs with federally-funded government programs; and
§ Obtain rich business intelligence about Customers’ utilization of the comprehensive program to measure their effectiveness and drive program improvements.
This will be a time and materials contract with a “not to exceed” amount of $250,000. Contract payment shall be tied to satisfactory completion of the deliverables. Satisfactory completion means that the “Deliverables” are completed to the satisfaction of the Energy Division and the IOU Contract Administrator. No state funds will be expended for the work described in this announcement.
3. Evaluation Criteria
Responses to requirements identified in the Request for Proposal will form the basis of the evaluation and will be subject to management review and approval. You may be contacted by representatives of PG&E for clarification on your RFP submittal.
All Bidders shall be given two (2) weeks to submit their Proposals.
4. Assignment
Neither this Request for Proposal nor any rights or obligations hereunder shall be assigned or otherwise transferred by your firm without the express written consent of PG&E.
D.08-11-031 can be found at:
http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/WORD_PDF/FINAL_DECISION/93648.PDF .
2 Specifically, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), San Diego Gas and Electric Company (SDGE), Southern California Edison Company (SCE), and Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas).
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You are invited to reply to this Request for Proposal to determine if your firm qualifies to establish a contract with Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) on behalf of itself for its Whole House Program.
The purpose of this RFP is to gather information about your company’s ability to provide the above-stated service. The information that you provide in the RFP response may be used by PG&E to make decisions concerning your company’s eligibility to participate in this Program.
Suppliers interested in qualifying for this work must respond to the Request for Proposal (RFP) by no later than 2:00 p.m. (Pacific Standard Time), July, 2010 Date TBD. Failure to respond by this date and time may result in your company being eliminated from further consideration. The RFP document can be accessed at www.poweradvocate.com.
Please follow the instructions below in order to register with Power Advocate so you can access the RFP document. If you encounter any difficulty with accessing the RFP online or have any questions regarding Power Advocate, please contact the Power Advocate Customer Service Desk via email at or by phone at (857) 453-5800.
As previously indicated, the RFP can be obtained by accessing the Power Advocate website. To register with Power Advocate, please visit www.poweradvocate.com and select “Register”. Select “I am registering as a supplier” and in the Referral Qualification section enter that you were referred by Christine Kleaver of PG&E and are requesting access to “RFP 23157 Whole House Program”. If you have an existing account on www.poweradvocate.com send an email with account qualification to indicating that you would like to participate in the event listed above.
After you have completed your registration, you will receive an email when it has been approved. Please allow at least one (1) business day for your registration to be completed.
The qualification contained in the enclosed documents is proprietary to PG&E. Your firm has been provided with a copy for the sole purpose of preparing your submittal. You may not distribute or otherwise make available to third parties the qualification contained in this Request for Proposal package.
Please Note: In order to successfully complete the RFP, suppliers must complete the Supplier Questionnaire (Access and enter your responses in the Power Advocate “Commercial” Tab) of the “23157: RFP 23157 Whole House Program. Failure to complete the questionnaire may impact your company’s eligibility to participate in this RFP. Suppliers should check the RFP tab on a periodical basis for any qualification which may have been posted on the event. PG&E will not advise suppliers that qualification may have been posted to the event once the event has opened. Questionnaire may be completed and existing responses added, edited, and/or changed throughout the RFP event until the event closes. This RFP event will close two (2) weeks after the Bidder receives the RFP at 2:00 p.m. (Pacific Standard Time), No qualification will be accepted in the RFP after this time and date.
Thank you for your interest in providing services to PG&E.
PG&E
Christine Kleaver
Link to Power Advocate: http://www.poweradvocate.com/web/software.htm
PG&E Contact: / Christine Kleaver / E-Mail Address: /Phone No. / Fax Number:
Department: / Sourcing / Date Submitted: / June 3, 2010