Two weeks ago, I wrote that efficiency programs are designed to be evaluated. They are not designed to be effective. That quote, or paraphrase, came from the great Val Jensen, Exelon’s Senior VP of Strategy and Policy, as spoken at AESP’s 2019 Annual Conference. Val is great because he is genuine, authentic, and tells it like it is, at least as far as a utility spokesperson can take it. I’d love to hear him if we could remove his utility filter. That would be fantastic. There would be sufficient material for thousands of Rants. Like many things with which I…
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Today, let’s consider a subject that is as squishy, subjective, and amorphous as net savings and non-energy benefits (see here and here). Today’s subject is savings persistence. Savings Persistence and Its Importance Even allowing for generous latitude, if I polled readers of this post, I would probably get a dozen definitions of savings persistence. For retro-commissioning, persistence is ensuring the measures aren’t undone. For the broader group of behavior programs, persistence is getting customers and their occupants (family or employees) to continue to value and manage energy over the long term.To the evaluator, savings persistence opens many cans of worms.…
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