Many utilities and public benefits organizations offer Energy Efficiency programs to their customers. Energy Efficiency (EE) programs help customers reduce their total energy use, either electricity or natural gas.
Organizations that offer EE programs want to know how much energy they are saving. The benefits of these savings are compared to the costs of the program to determine if there are net benefits from the effort. In other words, is the program cost-effective?
Determining program net benefits is less straight-forward than one may think when first considering the question. A major complication is that the key benefit, energy savings, is not easily measurable. While we can use meters and loggers to measure energy use at any given time, to measure energy savings we have to measure the old level of use before the program and the new level of use after the program, and then figure out the difference. Often, we can't measure before because we didn't know who would participate in the program. Also, measuring the energy use of a specific appliance can be very expensive. For these reasons and others, sampling is a big part of measuring energy savings.
The need for sampling speaks to the need for skills in statistics, survey methods and data collection as well as an understanding of how energy is used or changed. All of these components are usually part of any EE program evaluation effort. Individual evaluation projects that Daniel or Mary have worked on are listed on this page. Click on the project name to get more details on what they did.
ComEd Community Energy Challenge Mary managed a multi-faceted impact and process evaluation of Commonwealth Edison's Community Energy Challenge pilot, and performed the impact analysis. (2010 to 2011)
OPower - SMUD Mary prepared the first independent third-party review of OPower's comparative neighbor energy use reports. Billing analysis was done with fixed effects regression on a dataset of 50,000 participants and a control group of 80,000. (2009) Link
OPower – National Grid Daniel prepared this very large set of monthly billing data for analysis.
BPA EnergySmart Grocer's Program. Mary used billing analysis to estimate the impacts of the Bonneville Power Authority's EnergySmart Grocer's Program. Daniel prepared the data for analysis. (2009)
Massachusetts Small Business Services. Mary estimated impacts of Small Business Services energy efficiency programs for a consortium of five Massachusetts utilities. Billing analysis was done using a fixed effects statistically-adjusted engineering model and a joint report was prepared to meet the needs of all the clients and external parties interested in the results of the study. Daniel prepared the data for analysis. Included identification and combination of multiple meters per custoemer. (2009)
National Grid Gas Weatherization. Mary managed an impact evaluation of savings for National Grid's Residential Gas Weatherization program. Daniel developed an algorithm to create an after-the-fact matched control group for the study optimized on similar pre-program gas usage patterns and geographic proximity. (2009)
WPPI DSM Portfolio. Mary managed a multi-sector energy efficiency portfolio evaluation for Wisconsin Public Power, Incorporated, a cooperative for over twenty municipal utilities in the Midwest. The evaluations included free-ridership estimation. (2009)
Palo Alto Gas Rebate Program. Mary used billing analysis to evaluate impacts from the City of Palo Alto Utility's Residential Gas Rebate program. (2009)
PEC Pilot Programs. Mary led impact evaluations of two pilot programs for Progress Energy-Carolinas: Residential In-home Energy Displays and Compact Fluorescent Light Buydown. A variety of evaluation methods were used, including multi-stage participant surveys, in-store intercepts, follow-up phone calls, billing analysis and engineering models. Daniel prepared the data for the In-home Energy Display analysis. (2008 to 2009)
KCPL Low Income Weatherization. Mary managed and performed impact evaluation for Kansas City Power & Light's Low Income Weatherization program. Blower door test results were available for engineering analysis. Daniel prepared the data for analysis. (2008)
NWE Home Energy Audit. Mary developed a statistical method to quantify impacts of energy efficiency recommendations given to participants in Northwestern Energy's Home Energy Audit program based on results of phone surveys and a nested sample of in-home verifications. Daniel created an on-line survey system for the field staff to use to collect data. (2008)
National Grid EE Measures Database. Daniel developed an Access database for National Grid to use for tracking the energy efficiency measures data they were using from year to year. The measures data was used for reporting savings, and was modified as new information developed over time. (2007-2009)
WPSC Low Income Rebates. Mary performed an impact evaluation of a Residential Low Income Rebate program at Wisconsin Public Service Corporation. Night-time hourly data was used to measure impacts from new efficient refrigerators.(2003 to 2004)
Merrill Community Conservation Program. Mary helped develop and track results from a community-based Energy Efficiency pilot for WPSC. One community, the city of Merrill in Wisconsin, was chosen as the focus of this pilot. Community leaders were supported in the development of their own incentive structure to promote energy efficiency in their city. (1993)