How Do I Sign Michigan Banking Presentation

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well good afternoon everybody thanks for joining us again for our series with ashrae on hvac and other things that we can think about to help with the potential mitigating the spread of covid in our communities as you know as our case numbers are rising in michigan we're continuing to battle this virus and we're going to be for some time so going to get a lot of important information today we're going to cover a lot of it very quickly very excited today to have paul prentiss from ashrae that's going to be helping us with some of that information on humidification todd parker from michigan saves is with us today to talk about things that they can do to help you with some of these processes and chad miller and ken randazzo from consumers energy and dte are going to share some of the rebates incentives and other programs that they have in place uh for uh some of these things we're going to mention today but also in addition to just other energy efficiency programs this is the fourth part the wrap-up part of our series on hvac and we're going to uh cover humidification today at the outset we did a general overview part two was ventilation part 3 was filtration and we're wrapping it up today all of those are available on our youtube site as well and as we go through today you can submit questions through the q a feature but as we get started just talking about those cases in michigan and how much we're struggling right now just reinforcing that concept that some things have remained pretty much static throughout this whole crisis that's the need for social distance wearing face coverings when we can't do that or when we're indoors and good hygiene and it's just critical that we continue to do that because when we're both wearing masks we can cut that transmission by about 70 percent when we start taking those off certainly we have big problems and we can spread covet pretty quickly about 40 percent of the spread is believed to come from those that are asymptomatic these are folks that are going to be out and about carrying and shedding the virus but never feel sick that's another reason that these face coverings are so critical and as we move indoors with winter recognizing all of the things going on the this piece with ashrae and hvac we've been discussing is another mitigation step that we want to consider depending on our systems and a lot of other things that we're you're going to hear more about today to help us contain covet next slide so we have a lot of materials available we did a great q a a couple days ago on the miosha emergency rules that's also available on our youtube channel you can find all of that information at our website michigan.gov covid workplace safety guidelines fact sheets you name it all related to those emergency rules and other things that you need to be doing in your workplace so make sure you're taking advantage of that we have a hotline that you can call right into it's eight five five safe c19 the wait times been about 10 to 20 seconds it gets you right into the miosha experts that's for employees and employers so if you have questions around covered workplace safety make sure you're calling in a lot of great links there including to the my symptoms app which can help you do those daily health screenings that are required for employees and contractors makes it electronic makes it easy to track makes it easy to use and with that i will uh look i'm proud to introduce our speaker from uh with that's going to teach us about humidification paul prentiss uh paul prentiss is a degreed engineer from the university of michigan he's been in the hvac field for more than 35 years and his specialties include humidification boilers pumps and domestic water heating systems for the last 15 years he has been with the r.l deppman company where he helps design engineer engineers make good product application decisions paul is the past president of the detroit chapter of ashrae currently he is the chair of the honors and awards committee and an active member of the joint michigan chapters of ashrae covet 19 task force thank you paul for joining us today and i'll turn it over to you thank you sean welcome everybody this afternoon um hopefully we can impart some knowledge on to you that'll help you in your uh maintenance of your buildings and how to open back up through this covid19 pandemic three things that we want you to be able to take home from this presentation one would be the fact that humidity does affect the transmission of the covin-19 virus and as well as other viruses second we want to make sure you understand how humidification in a building in your your house your school your office how that humidification affects the transmission of the virus and also things you can do to upgrade and increase the humidity levels in your building next okay um because the coven 19 virus has not gotten all the attorneys yet i need to read this disclaimer in light of available information and accepted industry practices the covid19 task force members of the detroit and western michigan chapters of ashrae have used their best efforts in the development of this information for the benefit of the michigan public however we do not guarantee verify or assure that the safety or performance of any products components or systems tested installed or operated in accordance with these recommendations will be free from risk information on covid 19 is emerging and rapidly evolving the suggestions in this document should be considered along with the specific characteristics and requirements of your buildings as well as all owner and occupant criteria in all state of michigan and local health department orders i want to add on top of that that we want to make sure that you understand that suggestions that we make here are general suggestions and wherever possible you should consult your local design professional engineer that is experienced in hvac applications to make sure you're making the right decisions next skip this okay general hvac recommendations one of the things you want to do is if you make any changes to your building systems you want to make sure you document all these changes when your building was built there was a manual a specification book drawings that we created to build this building if you can locate this manual that is the best reference you have to find out what your building can do any changes you made you make to this your system should be documented you should train your billing operators on any of the new protocols that you've made changes in and also advise your occupants because occupants um no matter what building if there's changes to the hvac performance it may affect your occupants and you want to track and measure all the changes you have done to make sure that they have a positive outcome next um one of the things we want to do is make sure we practice safe hygiene when we're working on hvac systems ashtray has a standard that you can reference shown here in the on the slide but one of the most important things you want to do is make sure that any of your staff in contact with potentially contaminated equipment should be wearing ppe and keep your employees safe next no matter how you're going to vote next week i think we can all agree that this covid 19 pandemic really sucks and we need to do all we can as hvac professionals to help slow the spread of the virus and keep occupants of our buildings safe the world health organization is calling for a focus on non-pharmaceutical approaches so that one of the ways we can do that is by improving our indoor air quality so today's presentation will talk about how humidity can affect the transmission of viruses how humidity can affect our own human body's ability to fight infections and also how we can improve the performance of humidification systems in our buildings next why should we be concerned about levels of humidity one of the reasons is because humidity directly affects the spread of these airborne viruses another reason is that humidity affects our body's ability to combat that and i'll go get into that in a little more detail and humidity also affects the the activity and the life of viruses next why is this so critical this all started in hospital research um and this is not new um the the link between humidification and transmission of viruses has been around for a while hospitals were the first areas that these studies were concentrated on because hospitals obviously carry patients that have suppressed immune systems and they have a lot of viruses in the in the atmosphere another factor to consider for hospitals is that if a patient acquires a health care acquired infection hospital-inquired infection the hospital pays for any um any remedies that are needed to get the person back to good health so it's a it's a cost issue also for hospitals next as i said these studies with the link between humidity and transmission of viruses have been around a long time one of the most important studies is the sterling study that was published back in 1986 as you can see on the chart on the right the left-hand column shows some of the factors that infect the quality of air the second from the top viruses is shown and what what the blue band down the middle shows is the optimum range of humidity to combat these viruses the larger the the orange band that is where the the viruses have the least trouble multiplying and being carried around to other to infect other individuals so also respiratory infections as you see further down in the chart the greater greater the humidity is the less chance the respiratory infections have us spreading so we find this optimum range of 40 to 60 percent relative humidity comes up in many studies and is well agreed upon between scientists and experts next other studies that have been performed on the same topic were from yale university which studied the ability of the human body to fight viruses depending on humidification levels and also the mayo clinic did a study in minnesota in classrooms having some classrooms with no humidity added in some classrooms with 40 to 60 percent humidity and they found that the ability of influenza to survive on surfaces in the classrooms that were humidified was much less than those that were not humidified next when i first saw the slide i thought well maybe it's a jet engine exhaust but when i looked further i discovered that it was not a jet engine exhaust it's pretty nasty and it's a sneeze from a person researchers have found that a sneeze part sneeze particles that contain viruses particles can travel up to 25 feet and these particles are influenced the the distance that these particles travel are influenced by the amount of humidity in the air so now we can see why our mother always told us to cover our mouths and we sneeze if you look at this next slide this shows droplets of the virus in different stages over on the left it shows the droplets of the virus particles that come from a healthy individual and in well humidified air these virus particles are coated with mucus and water and they wait this mucus and water ways down the virus particles and cause them to drop to the ground fairly quickly and these viruses are expelled virus particles are expelled when talking sneezing coughing and as the humidity is is lower if you look at the middle section of this chart it shows that the the droplets have gotten smaller and lighter and they take longer to fall through the ground if the air is not properly humidified and there's not enough mucus coming up with the droplets from the from the human body as this mucus and water evaporates the droplets are much lighter and then can float in the air almost indefinitely next this this slide shows the droplets relative to the flow time if you see the larger droplets may only float in the air about six seconds as the droplets are smaller because they have less mucus and water on them they can float for about 41 hours so these droplets are in the air and being spread around with the with the air handling equipment for about 41 hours next let's study by the university of helsinki in finland uh studied the covid19 virus and how the transmission of the virus occurs in a in this particular case in a shopping uh grocery store as you can see here the individual in the lower right hand corner had sneeze and you can tell that the virus has traveled not only down the aisle but up and over the aisle the virus gets in the air stream and moves with the air especially when there's low humidity and low mucus on the particles it can travel quite a bit next this next slide shows the ability of the the human body to filter out particles that could cause an infection as you see up in the nasal passages the larger particles can get get filtered out and the luck and the this next smaller size gets filtered out by the trachea and then it gets into the lungs and only the smaller particles can get in the lungs next slide shows the the self-clearance mechanism of the lungs the human body has on its trachea and bronchial passages and in the lungs passages that are that have mucus in them normally from a normal healthy body and also this their cilia on the walls of these of these passages that act act like a transport to get the mucus up and out of the person and when these particles are breathed in by that individual they stick to the mucus and when that mucus is trans when it sticks to the mucus the cilia helps transport this mucus with the virus particles in it out of the body and keeps it out of the lungs and again this this occurs in a healthy individual and when the humidity levels are high when that humidity level dries up there's less mucus to catch the particles and help transport that out of the body next so this information is not just important for hospitals but it's important for offices schools homes assembly facilities production facilities we know that healthy employees pay dividends and that healthy employees give you fewer sick days reduce health care costs and increase productivity so it's important for everybody what are some practical solutions to to use to improve your humidity levels increase your humidity levels in your building next you may ask why do you need to humidify outside air right right now maybe the air is 35 degrees outside 50 relative humidity you're bringing 100 outside air into your building you're heating that air up to 70 degrees that same air will only have a humidity level of 14 rh once you heat it up so that's well below the the recommended amount of humidity to fight these infections even in a mixed air system where you don't have a hundred percent outside air the mixed air when it's heated up still drops below the level needed to maintain the proper humidity next [Music] when your building was designed it was designed to maintain a certain specific outreach let's say for example in the chart over the right your building was designed for twenty percent relative humidity that design is based on the worst case weather which would be maybe in this case a zero degree day and as we know many days throughout the year are not at zero degrees so these days that we're not at zero degrees that same system that provides twenty percent relative humidity on the worst case stay can maybe provide forty percent relative humidity for forty eight percent of the days if your system was designed for thirty percent of relative humidity and you would have eighty one percent of the days that you can maintain forty percent without making any changes in your equipment so basically that saying that there is normally some fat in the calculations to size these humidifiers when it is not on a peak day of zero degrees next some solutions to add to your humidity levels up the upper the upper right hand corner shows an electric humidifier that you can put hang on the wall in your room bring water to it bring power to it now you have humidification down below it shows a larger humidification system and that can be used on top of your building with the air handling unit that feed your building and humidify the entire building next so this this drawing shows the typical hvac system in a building down on the bottom you see a heating coil and a cooling coil and a fan these components as well as a f lter these components are usually in an air handling unit that's in a mechanical room or on top of your building the piece of equipment between the heating coil and the cooling coil can be a steam distribution unit that helps disperse steam into your airstream when these rooftop units air handling units are designed they're all designed to take into account the fact that they have a humidifier dispersion panel in it and this this will help humidify the whole building if you don't have humidification in your air handling unit for the whole building we can add what's called a trim humidifier or a booster humidifier that you see over on the right these these humidifiers are used to humidify specific rooms or specific groups of rooms those are easier to add to a system than adding a whole building humidifier but both both are available to increase the humidity in your building next so you wonder why can't we just turn up the humidifier well we can't turn it up to just turn up the humidifier without checking a couple things we want humidification systems have limits one is would be the wetting distance of the the steam dispersed the air temperature there's important consideration the dispersion panel the dispersion tubes have limitations and your energy source whether it's natural gas or electric will have limitations another item we want to consider is condensation particularly on windows and specifically single pane windows in older buildings next so you don't want your ductwork to look like this next ductwork can look like this if you don't take into account the wetting distance of your humidification stream wetting distance is the distance that it takes for the airstream to fully absorb the steam that you have dispersed into the airstream in the example shown below the airflow is going across the steam dispersion panel and to maintain twenty percent relative humidity this particular example shows the six inch steam absorption or wetting distance so that means anything between the dispersion panel and that six inches will get wet if it's in the way so we want to make sure there's nothing there whether it's in an air handling unit or just in ductwork if we increase the humidification level in some of these systems up to say 40 percent without changing the air temperature that wetting distance is going to be increased why is this important to know because if anything between that 6 inch and 18 inch dispersion length exist any components like a heating coil a cooling coil a filter a t or an elbow if there's anything in that distance in that wetting distance any of the steam in the air will condense on those components and turn to water and water creates mold and a list of other problems that we don't want to create so letting distance is important to consider and most manufacturers representatives can give you an idea of what the wedding distance will be for each particular example so that's something that you want to make sure you consider next existing equipment what can we do to to actually get a little bit more out of that existing equipment we all agree that more fresh air is better but in a lot of cases if especially in an economizer system where you bringing in a lot of outdoor air possibly up to 100 out there outdoor air your load is going to be highest when you're bringing in the 100 outside air so if you have a humidification system that can give you say 195 pounds per hour when you're bringing in 100 outside air if you reduce the outside air to maybe 50 percent you reduce the load by about 80 pounds per hour so that way with with less outside air you can raise your rh level closer to 40 percent now i want to make this very clear before you make any changes in your outside air you want to make sure you consult an experienced hvac professional engineer because there are many buildings many codes that require a certain amount of outside air and we do not want to jeopardize those those codes if your wetting distance becomes too long because you've raised the humidification level one of the things you can do is raise the temperature warmer air absorbs steam quicker so if if you raise your temperature that will reduce your wetting distance so that's something you can consider next one of the other things you can do to increase your humidification is to look at your dispersion tubes when your humidification system was put in your the size of the dispersion tubes the orifice size on the dispersion tubes was all calculated to provide the proper pounds per hour of steam into your airstream some of these orifice can pass more steam but some orifice may limit the steam you can produce and disperse into the the air stream you can check and make sure these tubes can be replaced or the orifice size is increased so that you can supply more steam into the into the system if you have the capacity to generate more steam and again you want to check your absorption steam absorption wetting distance when you do this next one of the side effects of increasing your humidity humidity is your your power usage again whether you're using natural gas or electricity your power usage is going to go up but we believe that the benefits of the higher humidification clearly trump the additional cost for this for this power supply next if you're using plant steam to humidify your air you will have a steam control valve that controls the admission of steam into your air stream this steam control valve was sized on application and the size as well as the orifice of the valve will make a difference on how much steam you can pass so you may be able to increase the size of that valve you may be able to increase the size of the orifice without increasing the size of the valve and get more steam flow into the dispersion panel now one thing you want to make sure you can check you may be able to increase the size of the steam control valve but your tubes and dispersion panel may not be able to handle that so again you want to check with your design professional engineer as well as your manufacturer's representative to see if this can accomplish any any improvements next so one of the one of the downsides of additional humidification can be condensation on windows specifically windows that have a low insulating quality what happens is then the steam that's in the air [Music] condenses on the window and when that condensation hits when that steam hits the window condenses and forms water which creates a list of other problems what you can do to prevent this is put a temperature sensor on the window and when that temperature sensor is on the window it can when it senses a cold air temperature at the window it can reduce the set point of the humidity and and whenever that is too low it'll reduce the output of steam into the building next there's other things you can do to get your equipment back up and running humidifiers have electric humidifiers have electrodes that boil the water to create the steam when these electrodes run for a while without being treated they build up scale on the electrodes and that scale reduces the output of the humidifier you can clean this these electrodes off to get better performance out of humidifiers and most manufacturers will have recommendations on how to keep your humidification system in peak condition next you also want to look at the piping that is leading from your steam generation equipment into your dispersion equipment anytime there is condensate that is not drained freely out of your piping system can block the flow of steam and create problems getting that steam out into your airstream where you want it so make sure you check with your installation manuals as well as with your design professionals to make sure you have proper piping next another way of keeping your humidifier up and running longer and performing better is to have water treatment water softeners as well as reverse osmosis systems get rid of some of the hardness and and eliminate some of the scale that would build up in a humidification system and that would minimize your downtime and extend your humidifier life and extend time between maintenance calls next so this is just a summary of what we we just went over i don't want to go too long on repeating this so uh next what's the bottom line the bottom line is that proper humidification is an excellent defense against the spread of viruses and we all need to do our part as building owners and hvac professionals to make sure we give the occupants of these buildings the best chance of surviving these viruses and avoiding these viruses and you can make most of these changes immediately and easily but again consult your design professionals next so your local hvac professionals many many of whom are ashrae members engineers manufacturers representatives water treatment specialists these people can all help you out and there are roughly a thousand ashrae members in michigan that make up this group of people that can help you out with recommendations for improving your humidification system next this just shows the sources that we used and these again are there are several studies relating the humidity and transmission of viruses but these are the ones we use today next ashrae western michigan and ashrae detroit chapters have put together a six page document that is an excellent resource for looking at your building performance and looking at methods you can improve the performance of your building improve the air quality in your building it covers domestic water hvac system recommended set points and also many cautionary notes that you need to look out for when making changes in your building performance also you want to get this document on the detroit ashrae website i think it might be available on the western michigan website as well next ashtray on their their home website has as a great resource also in the covet 19 section of their website one of the great things that they have is frequently asked questions because a lot of the people throughout the us not just in michigan use this website and are asking questions and they've been asked answered by experts and they can help you tremendously in trying to decide what changes to make in your building next that's what we have as far as our presentation on the humidification in relation to viruses transmission of virus and health of the humans occupying the building thanks so much paul really appreciate that information uh as i mentioned these will be posted on our youtube channel because this we're trying to be brief but these are very dense presentations as you can tell and they're very very important so now i'm going to kick it over to todd parker who is the director of programs for michigan saves thank you very much sean appreciate it and thank you paul for a great presentation it's always been a joy for me to follow both you and sonia on somebody's presentations i really want to show my nine-year-old daughter that picture of the sneeze though because i think that would really hammer home why we keep telling her to cover her mouth when she sneezes anyway about michigan says we are a non-profit organization dedicated to making energy improvements easy and affordable and we do this by providing low interest financing for qualifying energy efficiency renewable energy and health and safety improvements and since our inception in 2009 we've been michigan's green bank and you can see from the graphic here that we play a role that's uh intersecting between our authorized lenders to provide the financing for our programs our authorized contractor network that provides the services and installs the equipment and then our customers and utilities as well next so michigan saves has a variety of financing programs to help pay for these types of improvements our key our flagship program is the residential loan program we also have commercial and public sector financing programs our commercial and public sector financing programs are typically equipment financing agreements or efas they're called that start at five thousand dollars and can run up into the millions again for energy efficiency renewables and health and safety type improvements all businesses non-profits public sector entities multi-family housing entities they all fall under this commercial and public sector umbrella we have a really fast and easy turnkey process through our network of authorized contractors and authorized lenders and under our traditional financing programs the rates typically start around six percent and run higher based on the the businesses uh credit history for public sector entities the rates are lower they usually start around four percent or so and then in certain areas and for certain types of improvements zero percent financing or 1.99 financing may be available michigan saves has some great collaborative relationships with consumers energy dte energy and semco where those utilities will buy down the michigan saves rate to zero percent or 1.99 for their customers who are installing certain types of improvements so if you'd like to learn more about that program there's the link on the screen or you can certainly contact us if we can get you more information about our financing programs next slide so if you've been a regular attendee on this series and you've heard a lot of different improvements that you can make to optimize your hvac systems or handling systems to help improve indoor air quality and a lot of what you've heard are measures and improvements that are really operational changes that have very little cost or no cost in some cases for those types of improvements that have cost that's where michigan saves comes in and our financing can be used to help you make those those upgrades you can see on the screen here there are some typical upgrades you can make your hvac system to help improve into air quality and you know take any measures necessary to limit the spread of cova and other other viruses the one thing to note at the very bottom there installing uv disinfecting technology is is one that gets a lot of consideration the little lights or other technology that are installed into your ductwork around the hvac coil which help disinfect the air as it passes through one thing to keep in mind there though is if you're increasing your outdoor air intake into the into the ductwork then you're just disinfecting outside air so that may not be the best use of money to install those types of systems in those circumstances and as paul mentioned with any type of type of a mechanical upgrade improvement you always want to talk with a licensed mechanical contractor or another expert to see what is the best fit for your building and your system next slide and one other non hvac improvement to mention here that's getting some interest from folks are uvc lights sometimes known as blue lights these are in many cases portable lights that you can move into rooms and you turn on for a set period of time and leave the room and it uses uv wavelengths that disinfect air and surfaces and other objects that are in the room these are relatively affordable measures anywhere from a couple hundred bucks to roughly a thousand for a portable blue light system so that might be something that's worth looking into you can find a lot of information on the web and look for different uh uh distributors and contractors who carry those those those types of lights a couple of considerations here most of the measures that you implement are going to probably lead to increased electric or gas bills so these are not energy efficiency improvements when you install a lot of these health and safety measures and many of them will lead to increased electric or gas bills and also note that your hvac system becomes less efficient as filtration increases so if you start increasing the merv levels of your filters the system has to work harder to push air through that filter and that of course is going to lead to higher costs and then of course using energy for uv technology or using more of your hvac system or energy to help condition outside air also leads to higher utility bills so please keep that in mind when you're looking at these types of systems and consulting with your mechanical contractor when determining what is best for your building ne t so if you'd like to learn more about michigan state their contact information is here again happy to talk with you about our financing feel free to look us up on the web or just drop a note we'll be happy to talk thanks shawn appreciate it thanks so much todd and now i'm going to kick it over to chad miller who is the senior energy efficiency program manager at uh consumers energy chad yeah good afternoon thanks for having me um i'm not gonna give details about hvac systems that's my not my expertise but uh what i do know is programs so if there's one thing uh to get uh out of this uh what i'm gonna speak to in the next five minutes uh is we have a lot to offer uh when it comes to energy efficiency and thinking about updating your hvac systems just remember that your utilities have rebates for some of those measures so with that uh next slide so one thing uh if you're concerned about uh kovid and concerned about having uh outside individuals in your into your business uh we do have a virtual coaching opportunity uh this is where we would talk to you over the phone uh get some information about your business and then within that provide you a report that would give you recommendations of how you could maybe improve your energy efficiency next slide we also have a simple way to participate in programs through our online marketplace within the marketplace you can think of it as a small amazon you can go in you can order bulbs you can order smart thermostats we're currently giving away smart thermostats within 13 counties within the state of michigan if you would like to get on there today you can use the code sb25 and get 25 off your first order next slide in addition we have my business rewards um that's an interesting portal that we created it's a way uh to educate you about energy efficiency it provides gamification uh so by doing activities around your business installing different low-cost no-cost measures you can gain rewards within those rewards you can be redeemed through uh retail gift cards and again just an opportunity to learn more about your business and what could be available to you within energy efficiency next slide we also offer direct installation so that is where we send a team of people out in the field uh opposite the virtual uh coaching that we actually send people out to install items within your business we can all screw in light bulbs we install smart thermostats we look at aerators and other opportunities that are low cost in your business and that's all free next slide our trade ally program that's really developed around using uh electrical contractors that have agreed to participate in our program they use our program to help decrease their proposals to customers it's more of your larger elec uh kind of lighting retrofit opportunity uh and so if you're thinking about a bigger project this is the way to go next one just simple tips to think about you know unplugging devices that aren't being used we're out of the offices these days uh so kind of keep that in mind checking your thermostat making sure that it's it's the uh that you you know have the temperatures where you need them uh versus uh and making it comfortable as you need but thinking energy efficiency is important next slide and then just lastly uh so kind of wrangling this back uh to hvac uh type of upgrades there there's plenty of opportunities here we offer uh rebates on things like filters uh man air flow management systems rooftop heating units and then boilers and furnace tune-ups next slide so again just kind of wrap that up this was meant to just kind of give you a taste of what we have to offer if you're anything that you're interested in please just reach out and we'd be glad to you know walk you through the next steps thanks so much chad and then uh last and definitely not least our friend ken randazzo from as the manager with a whole lot of letters of ewr and cni business programs and energy partnerships at dte energy ken and we could add cni pilots to that as well thank you thank you sean thank you for having me it's a great opportunity to speak and what i'd like to do is just give an overview of all the programs that dte has and how customers and trade allies can get involved in the programs and help their customers out so what we what i've done is created five different platforms and on the next page there's a platform that we call emerging programs and it's about our pilot program so our first platform the small business platform is designed to help small business customers so we have two different groups and what we do is focus more on energy assessments and with kovad we've learned how to do virtual assessments with our customers but these two programs are directly involved with small business or we consider maybe up to mid-size business and we'll go in and do energy assessment we have it for both gas and our gas company and as well as our electric company and we'll do energy assessment we'll provide the findings of that assessment we've also modified them both programs a little bit where we have now trade allies you know we've done several assessments over the many years that we've been in this energy efficiency business and and with these small business customers we've got to try to help them through the energy efficiency journey so that's a little hand-holding i call it so now we've added trade allies to it so that if a customer is really interested we can have a trade ally help them and get some prices and and actually do the installing we don't do any of that obviously we're the utility but that's a way to help and so we're a significant focus on our small business and we actually are creating at some additional programs for them which i'll talk about on the next page uh we've created a midstream platform midstream platform is our way to make it easier for customers to participate in the program so we've got a lighting a food service and a hvac so yes you might put in some equipment to help kill covid but if you put in a new energy efficient rooftop unit you can help remove some of those costs additional operating costs so we've got three programs lighting food service hvac and i call them instant rebate programs we have distributors or dealers or manufacturing reps as when it comes to hvac that are aligned in our project they've got to sign a participation agreement with us and they'll participate in the programs and it's basically an instant rebate order the equipment take delivery equipment and you get instant rebate the customer doesn't have an application to fill out we ask distributors to supply us a little bit information because we have to go out and evaluate it so we need to know where it's being installed they've been very very successful lighting was our first one then we added food service and then hvac and how we're going to grow these three midstream programs is we're adding product to it hvac for example we started out with just rooftop units because we knew we had a lot of rooftop units in our service territory and after we studied it we found out we had over 130 000 so we added rooftop units and then we've added condensing boilers and now we're thinking about chillers and we might add uh pumps uh variable frequency dives and fans because they're all related to the hvac system so we're trying to focus on equipment that's related to those three midstream programs our traditional program is what we now call the downstream program that's prescriptive non-prescriptive it's been around since we started ewr or energy optimization in 2009. it's still there it's we've streamlined the application a little bit uh customers can go online and put an application they can submit it through a pdf there's lots of ways they can submit it it's the typical program pre-application is required trade allies are usually phil help customers fill them out or fill them out for the customer it's heavy trade ally work with probably 80 percent of our programs that come in through downstream are from trade allies it's been around for a long time we've started an operational platform now retro commissioning and strategic energy management and those programs are targeted towards helping customers conserve energy to participate in either one of those programs you need a building management system or energy management system building automation system whatever you want to call it so we can help customers identify where they can change their operating conditions or change their timers or change different things operationally that will result in savings hvac is primarily focusing in the retro commissioning area will optimize the hvac system strategic energy management we look at processes more than hvac although hvac is a big part of it as well but if you get into the industrial locations it's really processed and so we have different vertical markets we're focusing on in strategic energy energy management we have hospitals and we've got industrials and we're continuing to expand those uh our fifth platform that we've just added is the the uh we call them our energy assessment platform that's strictly doing energy assessments we don't do ashrae level one audits or anything like that we'll help customers do an assessment of lighting hvac some of their operating conditions and offer them best in practices one is the business energy assessment it's basically a walk through kind of energy assessment will give customers a report afterwards the strategic energy plan is helping customer develop a long-term five-year road map if you will that they take responsibility for they take ownership of it and and update it as the years go on so it's a continually updating five-year rolling plan and we'll help customers put that together it's obviously for strategic energy plan is really targeted to multiple site customers so so they want to be able to assess all of their buildings against each other all right next slide please our emerging platform or our pilots these are the different pilots that we've worked on for in 2020 they're not all listed the one i really like is the the find and fix we call them one is a steam trap there's another one that's not listed on here oh it is steam traps and compressed air um and those are specifically targeted steam traps are targeted to small business customers a vertical market of dry cleaners laundry they do their own uh cleaning in there they got boilers and they probably don't change the steam trap so we've tried it last year and has been very successful we'll probably commercialize it in 2021. grocer smart is targeted at small grocers it's getting at the refrigeration system so now you can see we're we're starting to get some programs that are targeted at a specific vertical market for specific measure or measures business energy reports is something that we are providing to our small business customers about how they use their energy in that particular market and then we'll give them some tips three tips on what they can do it's all virtual we never go out to the site it's all virtually done we mail it to the customers and then we give them some actions they can contact us for a little detailed assessment uh we've started an online marketplace like consumers energy has ours we've had a residential one we're just starting the cni one uh so that's been very successful power takeoff is what we're going to call uh virtual retro commissioning so we'll probably roll that into our retro commissioning uh programming platform so those are just some of the programs that we've been working on in 2020 that may get commercialized in 2021 we have financing partners you already heard from michigan saves we'll work with pace on projects but we've done a lot of work with michigan saves over the last probably six seven years i'm guessing and then we've got um some self-direct programs self-directed basically customers take responsibility for their own energy efficiency program uh there's lots of forms to fill out there's a plan they got to submit and it's very detailed and it's only for a certain size of customers actually and then we've got our energy star retail lighting program going to any home depot and buy a light and you'll see if it's dte service territory the rebate is instantly given to you at the on the shelf and then multi-family will do work with the multi-family common areas as well next slide please uh and here's our michigan saves programs todd alluded to him a little bit but we have um zero percent financing up to 36 months for 150 000 and then we've got a little bit longer term 1.99 up to 60 months for 150 000 also and as todd alluded to it's hassle free credit approved in two to four hours available with dt customers uh for prescriptive gas and electric projects and you can do custom as well which is oh man that includes basically everything anything in our downstream platform basically is eligible for the financing program so you really got to go through downstream to get the michigan saves financing and with that i think that's my last slide i want to thank everybody and i'll turn back over to sean thanks so much ken i think a lot of good information today we're only going to have just a few minutes for some questions but we'll do our best and uh i believe we'd normally submit any questions we don't get to over to uh ashrae if they can they'll help us out and get some answers back to you so erica if you want to jump in with any of the questions we've received sure thing first one is from bill all supply and return air grills are located in our building ceiling what can be done to ensure contaminated air is not passing over workers cubicles or in our retail branches so anyone do you want to address that one sure i can uh talk to that question a little bit so um the way to make sure that you don't have contaminated air and understand that there's no there's no way to make sure that you have a hundred percent uh uncontaminated air but the way to reduce the risk and probability of that is to make sure that you're doing um proper filtration um and any air cleaning uh that you might want to do with any sort of advanced technology like uv uh irradiation uh and also to make sure that you have the appropriate amount of ventilation air coming into your space free air clean air from outside um and of course you want to have um possibly increase your amount of ventilation air coming in under the uh advice and guidance of um an hvac specialist or iaq specialist who can look at your specific system um so those are the two things that you can really do to make sure that you've reduced that risk um unfortunately there's there's no way to make sure that you're 100 unless you've got a clean room and for just a general commercial facility you don't have that so your two best bets are to make sure that you've got um appropriate filtration and air cleaning and make sure that you've got a good ventilation rate one more thing also i i apologize i want to just throw in there um make sure that your facility maintenance is up to par as well and i think i would add sonia and you can jump on this if you'd like is that what the other consideration there is how is that air blowing because when we look at indoor environments we're thinking about air possibly blowing across employees not just what's coming out of that system but blowing across employees or customers or others and possibly moving that potential virus from one person to the next well certainly yes so the the the the circulation of air or the and the distribution of air in the space those are certainly concerned but i will say that the the system in general is designed um to circulate air so that when you have air coming out of your ceiling diffusers that they're not dumping on to people uh they're that that system the duct work the velocity of at which the air is coming out of those diffusers is designed such that the air is circulating around the room and not dumping on any particular spot or poor person and so if if the distribution of air or the circulation of air in your space is a concern then you also want to make sure that you reach out to um an iaq specialist who can and and a tab specialist a testing adjusting and balancing specialist who can help you look at your ductwork and your ventila ion system to make sure that um air is moving appropriately around your building and then also within the spaces inside the building okay all right well that we are actually out of time so shawn and i will just kick it back to you to close this out thank you erica and thank you uh paul todd chad and ken for joining us today and sonia who didn't present today but was with us from ashrae sonia had done our last three presentations this has been a wonderful series we truly appreciate all of our guests for joining us to do this this is important information things that we need to consider in whatever environment we have indoors that we may need to do i think importantly with all the great information from ashrae was with michigan saves consumers and dte is to recognize that there is help for some of this you know when you look at this it does get extremely overwhelming and you think about these huge costs and system changes you may need to make there are smaller things that you can do and as sonia has said so many times make sure you're checking with your hvac technicians to to make sure your system can allow certain changes because you may not just be able to add a higher filter or air circulation can have other impacts so make sure you're thinking about those things but don't don't let yourself get overwhelmed make sure you're reaching out and take advantage of the tools that michigan saves consumers and dte have to offer and semco that that wasn't with us but is uh involved with michigan saves on a lot of these types of things and you know we have to keep this moving forward as it gets cold humidity drops as paul discussed today that's something we need to think about so we're all fighting to contain covet i appreciate you joining us and taking the time great attendance today these will be on youtube make sure you continue to follow ashrae as they update their coping information and we really appreciate you and thanks for joining