Energy

HILLSIDE ? Researchers at Woodbury University are gearing up to host a series of public workshops to help homeowners, businesses and developers make educated choices about their energy and water consumption. The Smart Design Strategies for Managing Water + Energy in a Changing Climate series, hosted by the Arid Lands Institute at Woodbury University, begins at 9 a.m. Saturday in the Ahmanson Main Space. Organizers planned to stress local management of rainwater, storm-water runoff and reclaimed wastewater as being crucial to sustaining Western cities, particularly in the face of climate change, said Hadley Arnold, instructor and co-director of the program.

BURBANK ? With the hottest weeks of summer on the horizon, Burbank Water and Power officials are looking to the public to conserve energy to help stave off service disruptions. Even with Burbank's up-to-date utility plants, the threat of plant overload looms when searing temperatures drive up customer usage during peak hours, said Jeanette Meyer, marketing manager for Burbank Water and Power. "Burbank does have a really good infrastructure," she said. "But that doesn't mean we're not going to have problems if it gets really hot and air conditioning units are cranked way high ?

BELLARMINE-JEFFERSON HIGH - The Bellarmine-Jefferson High girls' basketball team played with an energy and excitement Thursday night that permeated throughout its home gym. The Guards started strong, never let up and rolled to a 70-40 victory over Louisville in a CIF Southern Section Division IV-AA first-round matchup. Bell-Jeff (21-7), the No. 6 seed, will move on to the second round of the playoffs. The Guards will take on No. 11 Pasadena Poly at 7 p.m. Saturday at a site to be determined.

CITY HALL ? Continuing a push to reduce power consumption citywide, the City Council last week authorized a program in which residents will receive information about their household energy use and recommendations on how to reduce it. The reports tell customers how they are doing relative to others who live in the general neighborhood and have similar housing and demographic characteristics, said Jeanette Meyer, marketing manager for Burbank Water...

Ask artist Cheryl Christiansen what is the hardest part about painting and she'll tell you, it's letting the creative spirit take over. "An artist needs to get out of their own way and let the spirit, let the brush, let the paints do the work," she said. Her exhibit, "A Journey of the Spirit," at the Creative Arts Center is diverse. There are 57 pieces in the show. They range from brilliantly hued florals to spiritual abstracts and a few collage pieces. "Art is all inspiration and comes from your spirit from a higher source," she said.

If the day has dawned and you’ve just shuffled down the driveway, warm cup of coffee in hand, picked up your Burbank Leader and settled into your big comfy chair to quietly read this column, know that I am happily ensconced in the carpeted mini-bleachers at Fun and Fit Gymnastic Center. Here, for one blissful hour every Saturday morning, doting instructors stretch, bend, bounce, run and otherwise exhaust my daughters, squeezing the raw energy from them as the olive press extracts fine oil. When both kids began attending school five days a week, the wife and I discovered a phenomenon that mysteriously occurred every Saturday morning at about 8:30 a.m. That phenomenon is this: Just about the time school should be starting, we had to decide whether to strangle the children or each other first.

In this economy, this may be the first time Lola Gandara is looking forward to reading her power bill. Gandara, who has lived in her Burbank home for the past nine years, received a Green Home House call from Burbank Water and Power on Friday as part of an effort to conserve energy and save money. “It’s really a conscious effort to do both,” Gandara said. “As you mature, you think more about what you could be doing to make a difference.” She had already replaced her home’s toilets with those that use less water, and took advantage of state and local rebates to purchase a more efficient refrigerator.

Karen S. Kim BURBANK -- Burbank residents shouldn't be alarmed if they find a bright orange cardboard box sitting in front of their door this week: It's carrying free energy-saving lightbulbs. Burbank Water and Power initiated an energy-saving campaign in June that included mailing two free compact fluorescent lightbulbs to each of Burbank's more than 40,000 households. The bulbs were expected to hit Burbank residents in August, but printing delays stalled their delivery until this week, BWP officials said.

A team of six John Muir Middle School students is doing more with Legos than just playing around. They’re also learning. As part of the First Lego League, an organization that pits children around the globe against one another in robotics building and programming competitions, team Hackn’Botz has worked on training and building its robot for the last two months. Today they travel to LegoLand theme park in Carlsbad for a Championship Tournament, against 59 other teams, where their robot will perform preprogrammed missions in front of judges and robotics fans.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was a no-show at a Bob Hope Airport political event Thursday, but the “No on Proposition 23” show went on without him. The event was called to criticize Proposition 23, one of nine statewide measures on the Nov. 2 ballot. It would suspend a landmark California law that sets sustainability benchmarks until one year after the unemployment rate returns to pre-recession averages of 5.5% or less. The unemployment rate in California was 12.4% in August.

A Facebook application that allows smart-meter customers to gauge how much energy they're using compared to others went live Tuesday, Burbank officials announced. Burbank Water and Power customers can connect their utility accounts to the Opower app via Facebook and see how they stack up to others in terms of energy consumption. Officials have described the app as a “Farmville”-type social networking experience. The app plays into what city officials have said is a key element of the smart meters - the ability of customers to track their consumption in near real time to better control costs.

BELLARMINE-JEFFERSON HIGH - The Bellarmine-Jefferson High girls' basketball team played with an energy and excitement Thursday night that permeated throughout its home gym. The Guards started strong, never let up and rolled to a 70-40 victory over Louisville in a CIF Southern Section Division IV-AA first-round matchup. Bell-Jeff (21-7), the No. 6 seed, will move on to the second round of the playoffs. The Guards will take on No. 11 Pasadena Poly at 7 p.m. Saturday at a site to be determined.

The popularity of the city's solar rebate program, combined with tax incentives, forced its closure even before the fiscal year began, officials said, meaning property owners will have to wait until next year to apply. John Joyce, who manages the Solar Support Program at Burbank Water and Power, said it was the first time the rebates had to be suspended since it began in 1999. “It's a good thing,” Joyce said. “We had a huge surge of applications.” The surge was likely due to the combination of dropping costs for installing solar panels and a 30% federal tax credit that will remain available through 2016, Joyce said.

The U.S. Department of Energy could learn a thing or two from the researchers and power-company employees of Burbank. While the nation’s energy policy slowly, laboriously trudges toward sustainability and cleaner energy practices, Burbank Water and Power has continuously stayed ahead of the curve. In the mid-1990s, when fiber-optic cables were in their fledgling stages as a viable transmission technology, Burbank was already equipped with them. This became a real competitive difference, city officials say, for studios choosing to locate here or to continue operating within the city limits that needed high bandwidth as they switched from film to digital technologies.

The sun beating down on Ikea's six-acre Burbank store is now producing energy to power store operations and ease the burden on Burbank Water and Power. This week, the Swedish furniture retailer completed the installation of 1,260 solar panels covering 35,000 square feet on the roof of its San Fernando Boulevard store. The solar array will produce as much as 421,000 kilowatt-hours a year, said store spokeswoman Mary Ann Barroso, enough to power 37 homes for a year. IKEA's array is the third largest in the city, after those at Costco and Warner Bros.

In this economy, this may be the first time Lola Gandara is looking forward to reading her power bill. Gandara, who has lived in her Burbank home for the past nine years, received a Green Home House call from Burbank Water and Power on Friday as part of an effort to conserve energy and save money. “It’s really a conscious effort to do both,” Gandara said. “As you mature, you think more about what you could be doing to make a difference.” She had already replaced her home’s toilets with those that use less water, and took advantage of state and local rebates to purchase a more efficient refrigerator.

Spurred on by consumer rebates, Burbank Water and Power has seen a doubling in the number of solar installations in the past two years. There are now 93 solar energy systems in Burbank, compared to 36 in July of last year, and nearly all were funded with grant money from the utility. Twenty-two additional systems are in the pipeline, officials say. Combined, the solar panels generate more than 2,000 kilowatts of clean energy — enough electricity to power nearly 1,000 homes for a full year.

Burbank Water and Power now has an additional $1.5 million for its smart meter ambitions, adding to the already substantial $20-million pool for the project. After being one of just a handful of cities nationwide to receive a $20-million federal stimulus grant for smart grid infrastructure last year, the utility was awarded a $1-million grant from the California Energy Commission and $500,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy. Burbank Water and Power was selected by the California Energy Commission for its planned solar panel project.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was a no-show at a Bob Hope Airport political event Thursday, but the “No on Proposition 23” show went on without him. The event was called to criticize Proposition 23, one of nine statewide measures on the Nov. 2 ballot. It would suspend a landmark California law that sets sustainability benchmarks until one year after the unemployment rate returns to pre-recession averages of 5.5% or less. The unemployment rate in California was 12.4% in August.

Burbank and Glendale utilities are looking for new renewable-energy sources after a decision last month by a Los Angeles utility to cancel plans for shared transmission lines for a geothermal project. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power abandoned its plans for a Green Path transmission line to the Salton Sea. The line could have carried up to 500,000 volts of power from an area that utility officials say has great potential for geothermal power generation. Power generated from heat, captured underground near the edges of tectonic plates, is also considered more reliable than solar rays or wind, utility managers said.