RTF May 2019 Meeting Recap

Another month another RTF meeting.  The new class of RTF members are starting to hit their stride and May’s meeting was packed with content and was particularly productive.  If you couldn’t make it this month, here’s what you missed. 

The RTF continued their discussion of SEEM Calibration which now spans across the prior two RTF meetings and a number of subcommittee meetings in between. There’s a lot of background that this May conversation is building on so if you need to get caught up on that context see here, here, here and here.

This meeting focused on integrating RBSA I Data into calibration. Significant segments of RBSA I data contain unknown unknowns. To avoid potential bias from unknowns the CAT recommended testing to see if keeping the data provides bias, and if not deleting this group of data from the analysis. This discussion also touched on determining scenarios and probabilities for the Monte Carlo approach decided on at the last meeting. Staff will continue to work with the subcommittee and is hoping to bring draft results to the RTF at the June meeting.  

RTF Contract Analyst Josh Rushton presented a white paper he co-authored with Bill Koran, SBW, titled: “Reliability of Energy Savings Estimates Based on Commercial Whole Building Data.” The focus of the paper was on publicly available temperature and schedule models applied to commercial whole building data.  Findings centered around reliability of modeling tools uncertainty, non-routine events, and automated methods. The RTF voted to approve these findings and recommendations. Going forward, staff will continue to engage with efforts to develop NRE guidance, research coordination, and will revisit findings and recommendations in a few years.

Also in May, the RTF examined another demand response technology, Irrigation Pump Controls.  As with previous technologies, this analysis focused on the per unit technical potential of a one-hour event. Specifically for irrigation pump controls, an event would involve shutting down irrigation pumps for that hour and would typically be implemented through an automatic signal by a power line carrier or cellular network.  With the approval of this analysis, the maximum technical DR potential per pump will now be passed on to Council staff for development of the supply curves for the 2021 Plan.      

Finally, Electric Vehicle Battery Chargers UES came in front of the RTF again and was approved as a small saver this time around. The measure specification is an ENERGY STAR Level 2 charger and assumes a consumer is already in the market for a charger. The baseline is a current practice mix of level 2 chargers and the savings are 5-40 kWh, depending on networking.  This is a new market and many things could change in the coming years, which is why the sunset date is relatively short for a small saver. But, with the information we have now, there is significant uncertainty in charging practices, steady state charger efficiencies, and market shares.   

The next RTF meeting (June 2019) will hopefully see the beginning of the end of SEEM calibration, as well as the final two demand response technologies, water heaters and warehouse refrigeration controls, and a presentation on the draft 2020 RTF work plan.  You wont want to miss it!