Friday, April 18, 2008

Welcome Note from John Cowan

Welcome to the newest tool for discussion within the energy efficiency community. We are a large community but not well formed. Every energy user (who isn’t?) should be part of the EE community.
I'm John and I'll be one of the hosts of this blog. EVO hopes this blog will be a place where the community can raise and discuss issues that arise in the practice of valuing efficiency projects. I am sure intelligence lies out there in the M&V community that can benefit us all. EVO is listening to the community to help EVO chart its course.

So, having been around the world on M&V topics, I have heard many common themes that may be worthy of discussion. They range from the very general to the very specific. Here’s just a sampling:

How did utilities measure the effects of Earth Hour?
How long do you have to measure to report savings that adhere to IPMVP?
How can I use IPMVP in evaluating my area wide utility energy efficiency program?
IPMVP needs to be customized for the situation in my country
Under IPMVP Option B, do I have to continuously measure energy or can I take spot readings.
I don’t have a three year energy history. Can I still use IPMVP Option C?
Is there a less expensive way to ‘measure’ savings than following IPMVP?
How can I be sure the M&V Plan proposed by my ESCO adheres to IPMVP?
What do you have to do to get the LEED New Construction M&V point?
How do I prepare my energy savings report for a carbon trade?
Let’s start with number 1, unless something else is burning you more.

On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invited people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. On this day, cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Chicago, Melbourne, Dubai and Tel Aviv, held events to acknowledge their commitment to energy conservation. And what a grand global demand response test that voluntary blackout created! Though everyone may be interested in how much was saved, the EVO community is probably more interested in how you measured it. So let us know:

How you chose your reference period.
How you adjusted your reference period for March 29th conditions.
How you measured load over the hour.
What if anything you did about snap back load after 9PM.
Whether you attempted to measure the energy effect as well as the demand - i.e., was load just shifted or did the load just vaporize - not occurring before 8PM or after 9PM?
How you determined how much voluntary curtailment by some simply allowed the servicing of other unmet load during the hour.

 

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Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Welcome to the EVO Blog!

EVO’s online discussion forums, formerly only for EVO Subscribers, have morphed into a blog for the public. We plan regular articles from EVO insiders (and outsiders who meet our editorial guidelines) to inspire discussion on M&V topics. This should generate more and better conversation for the benefit of the M&V community, including Subscribers. Available Soon!