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Home My WebLink About9/3/2019 Item 18, Mayer Purrington, Teresa From:Megan Mayer <carmelcotillionsllc@gmail.com> Sent:Friday, August To:E-mail Council Website Subject:Clean Energy Program for New Buildings - Please read our all-electric house experience before deciding Attachments:foggy pebble beach 1.jpg; foggy pebble beach 2.jpg Dear Members of the San Luis Obispo City Council, Congratulations on your forward-thinking agenda of considering the Clean Energy Program for New Buildings. I would like to share with you our experience living in an all-electric house in Pebble Beach, and thereby encourage you to pass the program. Our house was built before the gas lines were laid in our neighborhood - in fact, I believe it was built before the easements were granted. This means we do not have any gas lines connecting to our house. It also means everything is electric - the water heater, oven, range, washer/dryer, and home heating system. We also have one all-electric car, which we charge by the regular 110 volt outlet in the wall (not a dryer plug and not an installed charging system, just a regular wall outlet). We installed solar panels on our roof and included a battery storage system and could not be happier with our all-electric house. I strongly encourage you to bring an all electric community to San Luis Obispo for the reasons outlined below. 1. All electric homes on solar maintain power during storms without the use of loud, dangerous, risky generators. The week after we began solar operation in December 2018, we experienced a series of major storms. Each storm resulted in our neighborhood losing power for at least 3 days at a time. We did not even realize that the power was out because the system switched to 1 "islanding" smoothly and quickly. We had heat, a functioning refrigerator and freezer, and hot water. Several neighbors left their homes for hotels or to live elsewhere because it became too inconvenient for them to live without power. Our high school son was in school and was able to study and remain focused on his schooling during these storms. Also, rather than the very loud and obnoxious diesel generators some neighbors have, our battery is absolutely silent, need not be set up outside (we lost so many trees during those storms that it would have been terribly dangerous to go outside to set up the generators!), and do not produce any toxic fumes. 2. All electric homes (with battery storage) can use and refill their electric needs seamlessly. We have our battery set to charge up when the sun comes up and kick in anytime our use goes above what we produce. Thus we drain the battery at night and charge it in the day. Similar to waking up to a full charge on our electric car every morning, we wake up to a house recharging for that day's and evening's use of electricity. The arrangement is fabulous. Even houses without batteries are only out of power until sunrise - the sun need only be up to create power, even from behind cloud cover. 3. All electric homes with electric cars avoid the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. An additional benefit to being an all-electric house is that if your garage is detached, you do not require carbon monoxide detectors in the house. It is not avoiding the detectors that we like, but knowing that our house is truly clear of any such toxins makes it a fabulous place to live and raise a family. Our garage is attached and our little sports car is parked inside. When we replace the sports car with a second, sporty electric car, we will likely not bother to replace the carbon monoxide detectors because we will have no source of possible toxic fumes in the house. In fact, during a storm, 2 you can heat a house with an electric oven, but of course would likely make the news as a fatal statistic if you tried that with a gas oven. 4. All electric homes with solar can function smoothly even in a foggy, coastal climate, saving your communities thousands of dollars per year in energy costs. Our address is 3066 Strawberry Hill Road, Pebble Beach, CA 93953. Please realize that we are, according to GoogleMaps, .84 miles from the ocean, in foggy Pebble Beach. Right now, at 12:30pm on August 30, it is cool and foggy here (see attached photos, which I just took), while NOAA says the weather in San Luis Obispo is 79 degrees and sunny. Yet, our bill from PG&E keeps showing a zero balance owed since we were approved for operation a few months ago as a solar house. Somehow, even with our coastal weather, we produce enough electricity to save hundreds of dollars every month in electrical bills. 5. All electric houses spare your community from the trauma of gas line or house explosions. My friend lost her mother, brother, and nephew when the home where she was raised was ground zero and blew up in the 2010 San Bruno gas explosion (https://www.google.com/search?q=san+bruno+gas+explosion&rlz=1C1SQJL_enUS780US780&oq= san+bruno+gas+explosion&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.3663j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8). A few years later, a house blew up on Guadalupe Street here in Carmel - again due to PG&E's gas pipeline system (https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/PG-amp-E-Carmel-home-explosion-blamed-on-bad- 5316064.php). Fortunately, no one was in the Carmel house. I have watched my friend grieve her horrible loss. When she recently moved, she tirelessly researched where the gas main lines are to avoid living within 100 yards of them. She found PG&E difficult and unreliable in locating this information. We all remember, no matter where we are from, those stories of homes blowing up while 3 tented for termites because someone forgot to turn off the gas. We know the risks after an earthquake if people do not remember to turn off their gas source - and even if we as customers all do everything we are supposed to, gas lines can still explode, as San Bruno and Carmel showed us. All electric houses eliminate these risks to individual houses and to communities as a whole. I applaud your consideration of, and encourage you to implement, creating a residential community zoned as all electric and therefore: 1. completely free of the risk of explosion; 2. completely free of the risk of toxic fumes in and around your home; 3. completely free of the noise of gas/diesel generators; 4. easily captures all benefits of using solar power as an energy source; 4. has a completely carbon free energy source; and, 5. contributes to the grid's energy. This choice would harm PG&E and also natural gas producers by reducing their sales. Thus, they will be voracious in convincing you that this is a harm to your constituents. But please remember the above described benefits you will bring to the health, safety, and quality of life of many more of your constituents. Solar companies will benefit from your passing such a legislation, but those are the industries that we should be supporting by such regulations, not oil and gas - and I say this having worked in the oil and gas and petrochemical industry years ago. Please also remember that, while natural gas is cleaner than other fossil fuels, it is still dangerous and toxic, and its production emits methane, which can warm the atmosphere 25 times as fast as carbon monoxide, and the oil and gas industry is the largest emitter of methane. Natural gas is 4 nowhere near as safe or as clean as solar energy. An all-electric house is the best incentive for going solar and the best way to help a community be clean and efficient. I have no connection to and receive no benefit, pecuniary or otherwise, from any third party for my recommendations and opinions stated above. Please feel free to call or email me with any questions about our experience with an all electric house and a solar system with battery. I would be delighted to know that you approved the Clean Energy Program for New Buildings and to track its progress as implemented. Respectfully submitted, Megan G. Mayer Megan G. Mayer Chair, Carmel Cotillions, LLC P.O. Box 162 Pebble Beach, California 93953 (949) 838-5896 carmelcotillionsllc@gmail.com 5