Senior Advisor's Note

In this season of change, NEEP is embracing change in what energy efficiency data and metrics are needed to shepherd states through the tracking of progress relative to policy goals. The REED Database has served the region for many years by making energy efficiency program impacts available in an online platform, but now NEEP is implementing two changes: First, effective April 1, 2020, it has retired the online database, while still collecting the data and providing it to interested users upon request (contact Research & Analysis Manager Cecily McChalicher). Data collection for program year 2018 is taking place and will be available later this year. Moreover, analyses as found in the REED Renderings and last summer’s Snapshot will continue and will be posted to the NEEP REED website. Secondly, NEEP is embarking on a plan to expand metrics and reporting to help the region paint a more complete picture of progress toward state climate and building energy performance goals. In the spirit of “you can’t manage what you don’t measure,” this kind of tracking can help us all maintain the momentum necessary to achieve or exceed the climate goals set by Northeast state policies. The most recent REED Rendering provides more information about NEEP’s decision and plans.

 

From Pilots to Practice: Advanced Measurement & Verification (M&V) Updates

As many of you know, NEEP is participating in a project managed by Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection that has been researching advanced M&V (aka M&V2.0). The project includes Connecticut utilities’ delivery of a commercial and a residential pilot that applied advanced M&V software to analyze whole building impacts from some of their energy efficiency retrofit programs. This project is winding down this year, but not without a number of valuable experiences and insights that can be translated into practice. Here are some teasers:

Experience from the commercial pilot is now succinctly captured in a fact sheet published by Lawrence Berkeley Lab. Its headline conclusion is that advanced M&V shows great promise as a means to provide near real-time feedback on energy efficiency project savings, while supporting new program approaches. The feedback provides quantitative and qualitative review of savings and helps utilities manage their risks sooner than waiting for evaluation results.

Experience from the residential pilot inspired Eversource to begin incorporating an advanced M&V dashboard and the more granular understanding of customers into its home energy services (HES) program implementation so that program impacts can be optimized. The value of putting advanced M&V into practice to support program implementation was recognized even before the results report is published. 

While tools and methods are available for use with relatively low levels of effort, users of advanced M&V typically experience some learning curve to acquire guidance and experience to use tools, review results, and determine whether further investigation is needed.

To that end, new guidance and protocols have been developed to forward our industry’s increasing body of experience using advanced M&V tools. At its core, advanced M&V is billing analysis, which is not new, so many of the familiar “UMP” and “IPMVP” existing protocols pertain. However, advanced M&V is billing analysis on steroids, with more data and more analytical power. The new protocols and guidance ensure it is being or will be used for the best advantage. The protocols and guidance include software testing protocols, an advanced M&V implementation resource guide (forthcoming from Lawrence Berkeley Lab based on our pilot experience), and a forthcoming publication from the Evaluation Valuation Organization (source of IPMVP). These and more are the topics of NEEP’s Advanced M&V Protocols webinar: I Can See Clearly Now on April 30, 2020 at 1:30 pm EST. All of these guides will be publicly available this year.

CT DEEP is in the process of designing a web page that will be ready later this year and will house the project resources and tell the story for the M&V2.0 project.

 

Sharing Data: New Hampshire and New York Out Front

Data is plural (so many sources) and expensive to collect. Evaluators and energy planners know the time and expense associated with primary data collection. In the world of COVID-19, collecting data by going on-site may not even be feasible for a while. Yet, quality inputs are needed so that models are not spitting out garbage and regulators can rely on credible, timely data for evidence-based decision-making. This is crucial as our industry and climate goals evolve and resources become more interconnected. With these things in mind, sharing data makes good sense; however, it requires a lot of red tape to protect customer privacy, maintain cybersecurity, and ensure the data is both applicable and available. Recent actions in New Hampshire and New York are sending the message that data sharing is growing in importance, enough to warrant the effort and innovation required to make it happen.

In July 2019, New Hampshire enacted SB 284. This requires utilities to create and operate a multi-use secure online data platform that provides access to information about personal energy usage to consumers and stakeholders. The NH utilities have the power to charge third parties for data access through the multi-use, online data platform; and retrieve costs from customers in a manner approved by the commission. Features of the platform include:

• A common foundation of energy data;
• Adherence to standards regarding data accuracy, retention, availability, privacy, and security;
• User-friendly interface;
• Opt-in requirements for third party access;
• Voluntary involvement of municipal and rural co-ops.

Last month, the New York Public Service Commission (PSC) initiated a proceeding to address the strategic use of energy related data. PSC staff will file two whitepapers for public comment: one regarding the creation of an integrated energy data resource that would provide a platform for access to customer and system data, and a second regarding development of a data access policy framework that standardizes the necessary privacy and cybersecurity requirements for access to energy related data. More information about the 2020 proceeding may be obtained from www.dps.ny.gov (Case Number 20-M-0082).

This builds on the commission’s 2018 order (CASE 18-M-0084) and Governor Cuomo's Green New Deal. The order established guiding principles to serve as foundational elements for developing policies that appropriately balance privacy concerns with the rapidly changing energy marketplace. These include:

• Increase customer familiarity with and consent to appropriate data sharing;
• Movement towards improved access by third-party service providers to customer energy usage data, consistent with consent;
• Linking customer energy usage data with other sources of building data, energy use drivers, and energy systems data to enable enhanced identification of Energy Efficiency/DER opportunities; and
• Providing that the mechanisms for appropriate access to customer energy usage data are implemented in a useful, timely, and quality-assured manner.

The devil is often in the details. Regarding data sharing, NEEP recently prepared guidance on data aggregation best practices and a report on Utility Data Access for the Public Sector related to building benchmarking. Guidance on sharing loadshape data is in the works.

 

COVID-19's Lesson Plan for EM&V

COVID-19 has been disruptive to every facet of our lives and economies. One of the many consequences of quarantine is that energy efficiency vendors and evaluators cannot do on-site work. Another is that a large number of customer behaviors and energy consumption patterns – and the resulting end use loadshapes for our buildings – are, as we say, non-routine for a significant and as yet undefined period of time.

In order to stay on our positive energy efficiency trajectory, it is important for the energy industry to adapt evaluation approaches and help tell the story as energy plans evolve and programs respond to the COVID-19 disruption. The challenges to our industry include:

If, when, and how to conduct research in a crisis, as well as how to adapt our evaluation frameworks to provide meaningful results given the data collection and other challenges in program assessment and in energy consumption across sectors. A recent brief, Impact Evaluation Considerations in Light of COVID-19, from Illume Advising provides some helpful suggestions to address the challenges of:

• Managing ongoing measurement and near-term data collection;
• Keeping methods valid, given significant changes in work and life energy consumption patterns;
• Optimizing the accuracy of ongoing or near-term impact evaluations through engineering reviews, billing and AMI analyses, and other methods.

Finally, here’s a small silver lining that I’ve found: The COVID-19 virus is doing a better job of teaching everyone about some core concepts from the field of evaluation, measurement, and verification than I could have dreamed of. For example, the counterfactual – what would have happened without a quarantine – is an important concept, and estimating the impact of staying home means appreciating whether the curve is flattened, i.e. how much worse mortality and hospital overcrowding could have been. Managing this crisis is also a good lesson in the value of rapid feedback, forecasting, and the value of using multiple metrics (temperatures, diagnostic tests, hospital beds occupied) to understand and monitor trends. It has also been instructive on effective and sensitive communication, as noted in this recent brief by Opinion Dynamics on When Messaging Matters Most.

Looking ahead, COVID-19 shows that we in the energy efficiency community have the ability to follow its example and broaden our narrative, by building linkages between public health, safety, and jobs. Effective communication and messaging is a key element when discussing impacts of public policies. Some of the messaging ideas around the public health aspects are nicely laid out in this brief from Illume Advising, Bringing Efficiency into Conversation with Public Health and the Economy. 

 

New NEEP Resources

• Thinking Strategically About Electrification in Communities (2020 Webinar)
• Opportunities for Home Energy Information in the New York Real Estate Market (2020 Webinar)
• Northeast Strategic Energy Management Collaborative Workshop (2019 NEEP Workshop)
• Get the $ and People On-board for a Zero Energy School (2019 Webinar)
• Introducing End Use Load Profiles Study for the U.S. and Northeast (2019 Webinar)

 

Mark Your Calendar

Upcoming Forum, NEEP, and other webinars and meetings of potential interest

• AESP Summer Conference, Evaluation and Implementation, September 1-3, 2020, Philadelphia, PA
• Calculating Cost-effectiveness for Energy Efficiency and Demand Response Impacts, May 7, 2020, 12:30 – 1:00 p.m.