Directors Note
NEEP Summit – A Peak Experience!
In early October NEEP’s 2018 Summit, “EE by the Sea,” held in Middletown, Rhode Island, covered an ambitious set of topics, returning frequently to themes revolving around community and carbon emissions – or more accurately, the decarbonizing of energy use in buildings and on the grid. For the EM&V and policy stakeholders in the audience, the Summit was a peak experience since many thought leaders spoke provocatively and eloquently about the interplay between energy efficiency and electrification, with much discussion about what metrics are needed and how our data, evaluation, program design, and cost-effectiveness needs are evolving in the face of technology and policy driven industry changes. Also discussed at the Summit is the mounting evidence that system peaks are shifting, as a result of renewable energy feeding the grid. An excellent summary of policy and metrics discussions was captured in an article in the RTO Insider publication. The Summit was an opportunity for companies designing smart controls and smart HVAC (which can be part of the decarbonizing solutions) to come together with policymakers. The winner of the EE Olympics was National Grid’s Kevin Rose, who made an impassioned and cogent argument for building energy codes as a key element of energy efficiency. Slides from the Summit are available online.
Back to the Future with Pay for Performance
When it comes to paving the way for success in a changing energy landscape, the Northeast region is proudly demonstrating leadership in various ways, one of which is through pilot versions of Pay for Performance (P4P) programs. This type of program design can leverage advanced M&V software and metering data. There are projects taking shape in many Northeast states (NY, MA, DC, NJ, VT). NEEP’s webinar provided a primer – covering the basic concepts, explaining why this program design is a good fit with opportunities available from advanced M&V tools and interval metering, and illustrating some of the variations in design. To provide even more context and relevance to the future, California’s program and policy perspectives were also discussed. The speakers were very hands-on with the P4P programs and shared their experience as well as basics on the programs. Slides and a recording are available online.
NEEP up North: M&V 2.0 Workshop in Vermont
In early November (election day to be exact), NEEP’s EM&V team braved the cold in Burrr-lington, VT, joining forces with many local stakeholders and other rugged EM&V geeks to spend a day talking about evolving paradigms for M&V. An opening panel of three speakers framed the future: Sue Coakley, NEEP Executive Director, envisioning a future in which buildings, rather than individual end-uses, are the focus of EM&V; Doug Smith, ISO-NE, with a system operator perspective that for distributed resources M&V should not go beyond the retail delivery point; and Michael Li, U.S. DOE, describing national level focus on buildings as grid assets. The discussion dove deeper throughout the day, to cover Vermont’s innovative R&D and programs that make use of smart technologies, to review results to date from Connecticut utilities’ C&I pilot of advanced M&V as an evaluation strategy, and to hear from hands on developers of guidance. Of note, the International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol (IMPVP) is updating and revising its products, including plans to incorporate elements of advanced M&V. Slides from the workshop are available online.
Happy New Year: A Glimpse into 2019
National End-Use Loadshape Study
NEEP is participating as a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) member in a national study, End-Use Load Profiles for the U.S. Building Stock. The three-year project, funded by U.S. DOE is managed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Lawrence Berkeley Lab (LBL), and Argonne Lab. The project will collect and evaluate end-use and whole building load profile data from a wide range of existing sources and address critical gaps with additional data collection and disaggregation techniques. Data will be used to calibrate national-scale building stock models and produce hourly end-use load profiles at bo¬th aggregate (average) and individual (typical) building scales.
The TAG includes the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), experts from electric utilities, utility regulators, grid operators, energy efficiency organizations, and research and consulting firms across the country. The group will identify use cases, gather the best available datasets, identify data gaps, review methodologies, and disseminate results and review draft reports.
NEEP is partnering with NYSERDA, and also expects support from the MA CEC Amplify Mass program, to serve on the TAG on behalf of the region. NEEP plans to augment the work in the national program with regional outreach and collaboration, such as sharing the EM&V Forum Loadshape Data Collection Protocols and an update of the regional EM&V Forum Loadshape Catalog as well as support for research and modeling. Loadshapes characterizing building-level and end-use consumption patterns for key technologies such as heat pumps and charging stations, can help this region with planning to assist its strategic electrification and energy efficiency program innovations. The U.S. DOE project is scheduled to run through September 2021.
Cost-Effectiveness: New Resources
In 2019 NEEP will continue its role of facilitating conversations about state cost-effectiveness issues, decisions, and evaluation results. As an NSPM advisory group member, NEEP works with E4TheFuture on their tools designed to help states fully value and better align cost-effectiveness with advanced efficiency. Here are two new resources:
- Case studies describing NSPM application and related materials relevant to specific states are now available on the NESP website.
- The Database of State Efficiency Screening Practices (DSESP) is now available. The DSESP comprises a valuable set of state cost-effectiveness screening practices for ratepayer funded
Strategic Electrification EM&V/ Metrics and Protocols
The M&V needs associated with strategic electrification are many and varied, as revealed in research NEEP managed this year, presented as a webinar last September and to be shared at the AESP National conference in February 2019. NEEP looks forward to finding collaborative strategies to help states work toward making and tracking carbon reduction progress.
M&V2.0 and Buildings as Grid Assets
In addition to a public workshop and webinar andongoing C&I pilot study in Connecticut, a residential pilot study will take place in Connecticut in 2019 as part of the U.S. DOE-funded M&V2.0 study. NEEP and its project partners will prepare a regulatory handbook that provides guidance for the region to help stakeholders understand and plan for or employ advanced M&V resources in support of activities that enable energy efficiency in buildings to be assets. Also, the following state partners of the M&V2.0 project will be convening in-state workshops: Rhode Island OER, NYSERDA, and the New Hampshire PSC.
Technical Assistance: Mid-Atlantic TRM Update
Version 9 of the Technical Reference Manual is slated to be produced in May of 2019, with the support of Maryland utilities, DE SEU, and DC SEU.
Benchmarking EE Progress with REED
Work has already begun on data collection for the Regional Energy Efficiency Database (REED), and to provide the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), with additional background information about energy efficiency and system trends in our region. Background research in 2019 will include exploration of trends in gas utilities and in some of our region’s emerging contributors to energy efficiency.
Mark Your Calendar
Upcoming Forum, NEEP, and other webinars and meetings of potential interest
- Jan 21-24, 2019: AESP Annual Meeting (San Antonio, TX)
- February 21, 2019: AESP Brown Bag: “Shovels and Sieves: Making the Most of a Mountain of Data”