Prospect Silicon Valley

Zero-Emissions Vehicles -ProspectSV was the overall grant and program manager guiding 17 Bay Area communities in planning and installing 152 EV charging ports.Funded by the California Energy Commission, The Bay Area Charge Ahead Project (BayCAP) added electric vehicle charging infrastructure to publicly accessible parking lots throughout the Bay Area. Under the grant, we recruited 17 Bay Area communities, including cities, counties, and universities, and assisted them in planning for and installing electric vehicle charging infrastructures. The project installed 76, 2-port EV charging stations for a total of 152 charging ports in 46 locations around the Bay Area.Project partners included ChargePoint and ABM, and community partners included Campbell, Cupertino, Los Gatos, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, San Mateo County, Stanford University, Sunnyvale, Benicia, Berkeley, Fremont, Hayward, Napa County, Novato, Petaluma, Richmond, San Leandro and Yountville.ProspectSV was responsible for knowledge transfer, convening working groups, and developing white papers, presentations, and reports to highlight project findings.Funded by the California Energy Commission, this effort helped Alameda County develop and demonstrate a scalable, managed charging system at the Alameda County Garage in Oakland, California. The project aimed to minimize the energy expenses and grid impact of charging a large fleet of county-owned and personal plug-in electric vehicles. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory led the project, and project partners included Alameda County General Services Agency, ChargePoint, Kisensum, and ProspectSV. Grant funding allowed us to develop a guidebook on EV fleets, Ready, Set, Charge, Fleets!: Preparing for Mass Deployment and the EV Cost of Ownership and Energy Management Tool for assessing costs of EV operation, maintenance, and charging.Funded by a California Energy Commission EPIC grant, ProspectSV led a consortium of 20 project partners to provide an energy management platform for charging large vehicles, specifically battery electric transit buses, for the VTA for the purpose of avoiding demand charges and integrating existing fleet management software with the energy management platform to achieve operational efficiency and savings. Widely credited as the first true demonstration of Smart Charging in the US Transit Industry, our work has provided guidance shared with Transit Agencies nationwide.Advanced Mobility -Funded via Caltrans, ProspectSV and UC Berkeley conducted a market research study to understand automated people counting (APC) technology. We organized agency and vendor focus groups to identify barriers and opportunities in adopting and improving APC technology. Our findings from these discussions are being shared with Caltrans as they develop plans to expand use of APC in transit vehicles statewide. Our partner UC Berkeley is developing a platform concept that would help agencies integrate and sync services across jurisdictions, and provide better information to riders. Funded by Caltrans, ProspectSV launched an Industry Partnership program for advancing and promoting connected vehicle technology. ProspectSV formed an Industry Working Group and hosted a series of meetings to engage potential Test Bed users and build awareness in the connected vehicle community of Caltrans Connected Vehicle Test Bed on El Camino Real in Palo Alto.We estimated the potential costs and benefits of automated, electric, on-demand shuttles that could provide first- and last-mile connections to transit using a deployment scenario generated for Santa Clara County. Metrics addressed safety, accessibility, equity, energy, air quality, noise, vehicle miles traveled, passenger miles traveled, and vehicle occupancy. We identified sample deployment markets within Santa Clara County using GIS screening, and tested the mode share changes of the automated shuttle deployment scenario using Behavior, Energy, Autonomy, Mobility (BEAM), an open-source travel demand model developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Descriptions of the project process and tools enabled planners across the country to perform similar analyses in their localities. The resulting data provided valuable feedback to generate more specific automated shuttle services and lead to real-world deployments.Next-Generation Buildings -Procurement programs drive carbon emissions more than anyone realizes, even when theres a Sustainability Program that tries to do the right thing. The California Energy Commission EPIC Program provided a grant to launch the Empower Procurement Program, a 5-year effort to bridge the gap between California clean energy companies and institutional and commercial customers that rely on formal procurement processes to purchase clean distributed energy resource (DER) solutions and packages. Along with partners include Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, Energy Solutions, and ZNE Alliance, were assessing market needs across statewide institutional sectors, finding buyer interests and requirements, and assisting technology companies to be responsive to market needs. Our Procurement Initiatives are based on the major carbon producing buying streams such as fleets and building assets, and also include developing purchasing specifications, supporting e-procurement solutions and group purchasing, and challenging Californias institutions to procure emerging DER technologies from California companies. Funded by a California Energy Commission EPIC grant, ProspectSV was the prime contractor of the San Francisco Whole Foods Zero-Net Energy (ZNE) Project, or MarketZero: Taking an existing grocery store to scalable near-ZNE. The grant enabled us to upgrade of an existing grocery store to achieve net-zero or near net-zero energy utilization with a focus on aggressive and cost-effective energy efficiency. We conducted this project with the support of Whole Foods, Arup, San Francisco Department of the Environment, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The MarketZero project targeted one of the final frontiers in the goal towards a zero net energy buildings future: groceries and supermarkets. The project identified, evaluated, implemented, and measured a comprehensive suite of innovative lighting, HVAC, process, plug-load, and controls solutions at the existing store.MarketZero: Taking an Existing Grocery Store to Scalable Near-Zero Net Energy | California Energy Commission.We advised PG&E on the state of smart building technologies that apply to small and medium-sized commercial buildings, and that support a normalized metered energy consumption (NMEC) measurement and verification approach to measuring and claiming energy savings. We also researched multiple aspects of the market and included in-depth interviews with technology providers and mechanical/controls providers.