Question: What are Non-Programmatic Savings?
Non-Programmatic Savings are all the energy efficiency that happens in the region, outside
of programs.
So there are lots of folks do energy efficiency for lots of different reasons.
And what we've found is that there are a good number of people that don't take our incentive
dollars to do that.
Non-Programmatic Savings are essentially the quantification of all that awesome effort
and the energy efficient choices the Northwest is making.
Question: Are Non-Programmatic Savings real?
It's funny because market movements and big energy trends that Non-Programmatic Savings
captures can feel very made up.
Well, we came up with a spreadsheet and collected some data and it doesn't feel very real.
What's interesting though is that it's because of these big shifts in the market, that makes
it very reliable.
Because it's spread out across the entire region, you've got a lot of reliability that's
being built into it.
A lot of movement has to happen for you to be able to capture it at that big level.
So when you're looking at it across the region, you're really able to come up with reliable
estimates.
Non-Programmatic Savings are reliable savings.
They're reliable because they're measuring the total market movement.
When you have a big trend in energy efficiency, for instance the current movement to LED lighting,
you see that across the region and you see that very clearly.
The signal comes out very robustly.
And so with our detailed data sets and with the amazing knowledge that we have about the
existing infrastructure, we're able to estimate these total market movements very reliably.
It's a different way of getting to a similar outcome.
We tend to do a lot of measurement at the site level and this is doing the same type
of measurement but using different data sources at the total market level.
Question: How do you quantify Non-Programmatic Savings?
Non-Programmatic Savings are tricky to quantify.
It's one of the beautiful things about having incentives and paying end users directly for
energy efficiency is that you know exactly where and what that efficiency is.
When you haven't purchased it, you don't have that direct tie anymore.
So we need data.
There are a couple different data sources that we use.
One of the biggest sources is sales data.
When we understand what kind of sales are happening in retail stores or through distributors,
then we can understand what's going into the market.
We also use a lot of NEEA's building stock data.
So when we understand what's already installed, we can develop models that essentially take
the new sales data and applies it to the stock.
Question: Why measure Non-Programmatic Savings?
Now, what we know about the market is that a lot of people go out and do these energy
efficient activities without getting our incentive dollars.
So it's important that we capture those so that we're accurately accounting for what
the power resource is.
That we're accurately estimating what the contribution of energy efficiency is to the
region.
That's the biggest reason.
You don't want to have to estimate that you're going to need to build a power plant or obtain
additional resources when in fact, that's happening and you just didn't know about it.
Energy efficiency is getting built.
That's reason number one.
Reason number two is that you don't want to have program strategies that waste rate payers'
dollars, where energy efficiency is already happening.
So if you don't need to be investing your dollars directly in that way, you shouldn't
be.
Question: Why is the future of Non-Programmatic Savings?
So the future of Non-Programmatic Savings is that we're going to be quantifying a lot
more markets and we're going to be doing a lot more research.
The market research that we've done so far has shown much bigger savings than what we
anticipated.
Because of that, we're really trying to understand how that works in different markets.
And by market I mean the HVAC market or the non-residential lighting market.
We're kicking off a bunch of different research in a wide range of markets and figuring out,
first of all, can we get the data?
Secondly, are we able to estimate the savings?
Once we've figured that out, we'll start releasing out the additional numbers and looking for
where we see big market movements that are happening outside of programs and where we're
not.
Because that's very important information for our programs to have so that they can
then refine their strategies.
So energy efficiency is a power resource but unlike other power resources, energy efficiency
can be built by anybody.
Anybody can develop the power plant that fuels our future.
Non-Programmatic Savings captures all of the energy efficiency that folks are doing that
we aren't paying for directly.
That energy efficiency is just as valuable but it's most valuable when you know about
it.
The future of Non-Programmatic Savings is that we're going to be hearing a lot about
it.
We are going to be tracking every market that we can get data on over the next year.
So we'll be getting a lot more information.
The estimates that we have are that this is going to become a bigger and bigger source
of the region's energy efficiency.