Best practices for developing cost-effective evaluation, measurement, and verification plans: lessons learned from 12 Northern California municipal utilities

Panel: Panel 3. Monitoring & evaluation: understanding change and how to deliver energy efficiency

Authors:
David Reynolds, Northern California Power Agency, USA
Katherine Johnson, Johnson Consulting Group,
Gary Cullen, Summit Blue Consulting, Canada

Abstract

Evaluation, measurement, and verification studies are vital to the success of any energy efficiency program. However, it is oft en so costly to undertake these studies, that they are rarely completed by those utility organizations that could benefit the most. This was the challenge facing 12 Northern California municipal and rural electric utilities. Under a new law, they were required to conduct evaluation, measurement, and verification (E,M&V) studies for programs in their energy efficiency portfolios. This has been a requirement for California investor-owned utilities; however, it was a new requirement for the municipally-owned and rural electric cooperative utilities in the state. Most of these utilities had small staffs, limited resources, and little experience in managing these types of evaluation activities.

This paper describes the solution developed by the Northern California Power Agency (NCPA) which helped to ease the financial and administrative burden facing its members. NCPA developed a cost-eff ective collaborative framework that would meet the necessary regulatory requirements. In this approach, the utilities could pool funds and combine resources to complete comprehensive E,M&V studies across multiple service territories. This paper will describe the approaches used by these organizations to complete E,M&V studies for residential, commercial, and industrial programs.

The utility members participating in this process were diverse: some only had 500 customers, while others served communities of 300,000. However, this framework was flexible enough to meet the diverse needs of these utilities without causing undue financial hardships.