Charles Toca Bio

Charles R. Toca started Utility Savings & Refund Services in 1990 to save money for commercial and industrial companies on their energy bills. Utility Savings & Refund,LLC(www.Utility-Savings.com)was formed in 2001 to sell not-for-profit natural gas services. At the time, every natural gas customer of US&R became a member-owner of our rural electric cooperative.

US&R is currently engaged in selling and building clean technology energy plants, based on the advanced energy storage technology of VRB Power Systems, Inc. Although our plants can be sized up or down to the application, our model is a 5 MW plant with 4 - 8 hours of energy storage. Our plants pay for themselves by selling ancillary services to the regional power grid operators, providing demand response, providing capacity in areas where typical power plants are not welcome, selling on-peak energy, and providing UPS and emergency back-up to on site host.

Charles Toca is also a founding member of the BioEnergy Producers Association, www.BioEnergyProducers.org. The mission of the BioEnergy Producers Association (BPA) is to advance the development and commercialization of sustainable, environmentally preferable industries that produce power, fuels, and chemicals from agricultural, forestry, and urban sources of biomass and plastic wastes.

Mr. Toca has also been a member of the board of the California Electric Users Cooperative. The CEUC was formed to procure electricity for the processing plants and members of our agricultural cooperatives. Our non-profit, member owned cooperative procured power for 2,828 meters representing over 150 megawatts of non-coincident demand.

Mr. Toca was certified in 1998 (Certification No. 44) by the Association of Energy Engineers as an Energy Procurement Professional, C.E.P.. He's a member of the National and Southern California Chapter of the AEE and is also a member of the Cogeneration & Competitive Power Institute, Energy Services Marketing Society and the Environmental Engineers & Managers Institute of the AEE.

About Advanced Energy Storage for the Grid

I'm interested in building clean energy plants using advanced energy storage technologies. These plants can provide ancillary services to the regional power grid operators, capacity in areas where it's difficult to site typical power plants, demand response, peak shaving, and UPS and emergency power to industrial customers. I'm more interested in practical applications right now then in all the possibilities for the future. Where are the technologies and applications that are possible today?