Notice of accessing, collecting, storing, using and disclosing energy usage information
Valley Clean Energy Alliance (VCEA) is committed to protecting your privacy, and as such we comply with the California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC) “Rules Regarding Privacy and Security Protections for Energy Usage Data” (found here: http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Published/G000/M026/K531/26531585.PDF).
Data we collect and how we use it
We collect from Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) the following information regarding electricity customers within our jurisdictional territory: name, address, phone number, email address, account information, and electric usage information (collected from the customer’s meter). This personal information is used only for core VCEA business, for example planning for and providing electricity, customer service, generating charges for your bill, and VCEA service improvement. Your personal data is only kept for as long as is necessary for business purposes.
As you use the VCEA web site, we collect information automatically sent to us by your browser, as well as information about your usage of the site. The links that are clicked on, the pages that are viewed, and time spent on the site are some of the usage statistics and information used in composing web site analytics and reports that help us measure the usefulness of our site. One of the pieces of data automatically sent to us is your IP address. Your IP address is an internet protocol address number automatically assigned to you when you’re using the internet. It is logged by our servers and is used to provide web-related services for you, and analytics to VCEA. We do not associate your IP address with personal customer data that we receive from PG&E.
General security protections
As required by the CPUC, VCEA uses appropriate administrative, technical and physical safeguards to protect your information from unauthorized access, including: reasonable employee training, independent audits and annual reporting activities.
De-identified information
De-identified or aggregated information is not subject to privacy restrictions, and VCEA may use or share such information when the data is sufficiently de-identified or aggregated to the point where it is no longer personally identifiable.
Individual choice and access
VCEA will provide to you, upon request, access to your personal information collected by VCEA, which we can update or correct with your input.
VCEA only collects the minimum information needed to provide services to our customers. If you do not wish us to collect and store your information, we may not be able to deliver the associated service(s).
Children’s privacy
We do not monitor or track the ages of the visitors to our website, but we realize that children under the age of 18 may be interested in the information offered on our website. We ask that parents monitor their children’s use of our website and prohibit them from submitting personal information to our website.
California Do not track disclosures
Your browser may have a “Do not track” setting, but unfortunately there is not yet a common understanding of how to interpret this signal, so VCEA’s website does not currently respond to browser “Do not track” signals.
Cookies
The VCEA website uses cookies to enhance our customers’ web browsing experience. Cookies are small text files placed temporarily on your computer by a web server. VCEA does not collect personal data from cookies, as they are only used to directly provide a customer-friendly web experience.
Google Analytics and web service providers
VCEA website may utilize web-based third party service providers to collect and analyze web usage and traffic. These third parties are listed below with a description of why and how VCEA uses their services. They have their own privacy policies and may collect personal information in accordance with their own data collection policies and practices.
VCEA uses Google Analytics to improve our web-based service offerings, and in order to do that Google Analytics collects your device’s IP address (rather than your name or other identifying information), and we do not combine the information collected through Google Analytics with any other information you or PG&E may have provided to us. Google cookies may be used to collect web site usage information such as how often users visit this site, what pages they visit, and what other sites they visited prior to coming to this site. Learn more about how we and Google use this information at http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/.
Hotjar provides VCEA with a different kind of analytics than Google, but collects similar information. Hotjar cookies may be used, but VCEA does not combine the information collected through Hotjar with any other information you or PG&E may have provided to us. Learn more about Hotjar and their privacy practices at https://www.hotjar.com/privacy.
Third parties
In order to provide the services to which you have subscribed, VCEA may utilize third party service providers. VCEA holds these third parties to the same high privacy standards we have set for ourselves. We only share with these entities the minimum amount of information necessary to provide the services we require of them, and they are not permitted to use the shared information for any other purpose.
In rare circumstances, VCEA may be forced to share your identifiable information with other third parties in accordance with CPUC rules and orders, as well as state and federal law. We may also need to do this during situations involving an imminent threat to life or property. Other than for these rare circumstances, VCEA will not release personal information about you to any other person or business for any secondary purposes without your written consent.