Last week we explored the mélange of combinations of energy efficiency portfolio administration, delivery, and evaluation among stakeholders, including public utilities’ commissions, utilities, for-profit and non-profit administrators, and program implementers. No two states are alike. This week we will discuss a few more things from the article in Public Utilities Fortnightly, Top Performing States in Energy Efficiency. Impact of Energy Efficiency Resource Standards (EERS) States have everything from carrots, sticks, both, or neither for meeting efficiency goals. Some states have energy efficiency resource standards. The map below, courtesy of ACEEE, shows recent EERS across the fruited plain. An EERS “is…
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I've been doing a lot of program impact evaluation for the last few months. That comes with pluses and minuses. One of the minuses is that I needed to suspend writing this blog for a while. Pluses include problem-solving, working with staff throughout our company, and forensics engineering. Impact Evaluation But first, what is impact evaluation? I have a broad audience, and I get great feedback, some of which is, "I don't know what you're talking about sometimes." Entities delivering efficiency programs (implementers) are responsible for delivering savings or impacts. For custom efficiency portfolios, which entail a wide variety of…
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It has been a while since I’ve written anything about programs, so here it goes. Program evaluation provides about half our business, and much of that is verifying gross savings estimates, which are simply the original program-claimed savings. Verifying custom projects, those that don’t fall into mass categories like light bulbs and air conditioners, are generally more interesting, at least from an energy analysis perspective. Findings from the field can be follical (new word derived from folly) for any type of measure. Implementers of custom efficiency programs, especially implementers not accustomed to the evaluation process, can be especially entertaining. In…
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