Nestled between Austin and San Antonio, the City of New Braunfels is home to some well-loved landmarks: Schlitterbahn Water Park, Natural Bridge Caverns and Gruene Hall. New Braunfels is among the 15-fastest growing cities/towns in the US and the fourth fastest-growing Texas city, adding nearly 8,000 new residents between 2020-2021. New Braunfels Utilities (NBU), established in 1942, is a municipally-owned electric, water, and wastewater utility with a board of trustees appointed by an elected city council. To learn more about what was going on with our neighbor to the south, we caught up with Sarah Richards, NBU Director of Customer Solutions.
TXSES: Sarah, a question we always like to ask our guests: how did you find your way to NBU?
Sarah: I’ve worked in the natural resources space for much of my career but mostly on water sustainability issues, specifically on strategic initiatives. My educational background is rooted in the sciences, both hard and social sciences: biology, psychology, and anthropology.
After attending the University of Texas as an undergraduate, I gained teaching and communications skills when I pursued my master’s in education and then was a classroom teacher for several years. I love translating highly technical content into a language we can all understand and act on. It was in my role as a water program officer at the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation that I first partnered with NBU on an innovative water project. I’m now fortunate to be here directing that same project as well as providing strategic direction on the energy side.
TXSES: Fair to say energy is a new area for you?
Sarah: For the most part, but the challenges and opportunities utilities face with technology, innovation, and changing business models are very similar on the water and energy side. My passion is strategic program development with achievable goals that cut across issue areas and that require public-facing programs with lots of engagement. With all that’s happening in the clean energy space here in Texas, I couldn’t be happier to be doing what I’m doing at NBU.
TXSES: Back in March and April, NBU hosted a two-day workshop on solar energy, for the management team at NBU. Tell us about that.
Sarah: It was Pete Parsons, TXSES executive director, who made that happen. She reached out to our CEO, Ian Taylor, who was very receptive to the idea. It was so timely for us as we work with solar vendors and other providers on solar projects both residential and commercial. Transition is hard in general, especially for a utility like NBU for utilities writ large and equally hard for a small utility like NBU, experiencing dramatic growth with limited resources. To their credit, NBU leadership has recognized that solar and other distributed energies must become part of the energy mix. My position, Director of Customer Solutions, was created expressly to help with this transition. Pete assembled a dream team of experts to provide the right kind of content and experience specifically for our management team.
TXSES: The agenda looked like a who’s who of distributed energy experts.
Sarah: It was an across-the-board group of experts. There were folks from Austin Energy, CPS Energy, industry, national labs, and consultants, all of whom shared their experience and knowledge about technical opportunities and challenges, funding, state and national examples of community solar, residential and commercial solar programs, valuing solar. The workshop provided a wealth of information that is increasing our team’s understanding and confidence in moving forward with initiatives that are still new to us. On behalf of all of us at NBU, we were so appreciative of Pete and TXSES, and all the incredible speakers for so graciously sharing their time and incredible wealth of knowledge with our team.
TXSES: Have you surveyed your customers about solar and other distributed generation resources?
Sarah: We recently conducted a customer satisfaction survey in which we asked specifically about interest in renewable energy products and programs. More than half of the customers surveyed shared they would find information like guidance on rooftop solar panels valuable or very valuable. We also asked questions aiming to understand our customer values that might motivate participation in new programs. They rated how valuable they would find programs that: 1) reduce their water and energy use; 2) reduce their electric and water bills; and 3) conserve our natural resources. We assumed the financial driver would be the most important, but results showed that while close to 79% were interested in programs that reduce their electric or water bill, 83% of customers would find programs that conserve our natural resources helpful. We’ve also conducted a series of focus groups as part of our utility strategic plan update, and what we learned was that our customers care about natural resource protection. We believe we’re seeing this in the dramatic uptick in our solar programs and electrification opportunities. Our commercial customers in particular are interested in fleet electrification opportunities; this being driven potentially by national and global corporate climate goals.
Long Draw Solar Farm | Borden County | 225MWac
TXSES: Let’s talk about NBUs solar program.
Sarah: I’d love to! With 47,623 electric customers in our service area, we currently have about 400 residential systems and eight commercial systems. Applications for new systems are overwhelming: we have around 100 new projects in the queue, demonstrating exponential growth year-over-year. Our solar rebate program offers $3K for residential and $26K for commercial projects. We’re in the process of developing new guidelines and processes for both customers and solar vendors. Our new programs will provide a greater level of customer education and public outreach on distributed energy and energy efficiency.
I should also mention our solar efforts on the power purchase side. As a retail electric provider that does not generate our own electricity but purchases power through power purchase agreements (PPAs) and on the markets, our largest PPA is for solar energy, keeping our energy portfolio at around 30% renewable energy. The 225 MW Long Draw project in Borden County is a partnership with Denton Municipal Electric, Garland Power & Light, and Kerrville Public Utility Board. It became operational in mid-December 2020 and provides us with 100MW solar energy.
TXSES: That’s a great segue to the two distributed energy workshops this past spring.
Sarah: Those two days were so important for middle and executive leadership to be together in this work. Utilities can operate in silos; this training gave us the opportunity to understand how it will take multiple teams – from finance, power supply planning, electric operations, communications and external affairs, and customer solutions – to be involved in the process. It’s important for us all to understand the issues, especially the pain points, to enable us to craft solid programs that deliver. In our executive post-workshop debrief, we talked about how solar dovetailed with our DERs strategies. No one was pushing a value-driven agenda and while New Braunfels does not have climate action goals, we felt better knowing what other “munis” are doing in that space.
TXSES: Next steps?
Sarah: We’re focused on a new three-year plan to fully design and deploy new and enhanced distributed energy, solar and electric transportation programs. This begins with forecasting electric demand and determining the right mix of distributed energy and solar that we want in our power supply mix. Once we have targets for how much solar and other DERs we need in our system, we will expand residential and commercial rooftop solar programs and look at community solar projects that will help us achieve our targets, all while meeting the needs of our customers.
We’re also interested in exploring interesting projects like the solar-powered parking lot project Big Sun Solar is doing with CPS Energy in San Antonio. That provides a great template for us until we can build up our own programs. We are looking to help our customers with the challenges they are facing on the solar front. Lately, our community has been struggling with misinformation from some rooftop solar vendors. We are committed to providing sound, factual information and additional guidelines that can aid our customers in the rooftop solar process.
TXSES: Seems like NBU would be a great case study for how a small municipal utility becomes a distributed energy resources champion!
Sarah: Fingers crossed; I sure hope so! We still have a lot to learn on this front, but we are excited to grow our program and we are eager to share news of our successes and failures with our partners and friends because they’ve so graciously done the same for us.
TXSES: It’s a story worth sharing. Thanks for the conversation, Sarah.