RTF October 2019 Meeting Recap

October’s RTF Meeting was jam-packed with content, excitement, and a lot of amendments. Members were presented with the first measure to incorporate the recently completed SEEM Calibration updates, Single Family Weatherization, and also tackled DHPs in electrically heated zonal homes.  Discussions on these complex measures that are facing a lot of change were nuanced and productive. If you couldn’t make the meeting, here’s what you missed.

First up was Residential Single Family Weatherization which marks the first of a number of measures now due for updates post-SEEM calibration. This measure update was first brought to the RTF in September, but when the RTF was unable to agree on a motion, staff was directed to come back this month to address some of the group’s concerns. Specifically, staff brought back a presentation to walk through all of the decisions to date that impact the savings for this measure. The RTF has made decisions throughout the year that impact SEEM related measures, including: approach to long-term measure interaction, homes used to represent baseline homes, assigning representative cities for weather files used in modeling, updates to assumed thermostat set points, and the introduction of the updated SEEM calibration. Along with these updated methodologies, staff presented updates savings, which for the most part went down, and updated measure costs, which primarily went up. The RTF voted to approve the measure but determined that more research was needed to consider these estimates reliable, so it set the measure to planning. Staff is expected to come back soon with a proposed research strategy for the RTF’s consideration.

The rest of the meeting was mostly taken up by the Ductless Heat Pumps for Zonal, Electrically Heated Homes UES measure. As in preliminary subcommittee meetings, staff couched their update in the reality that the results they would be presenting indicated no cost-effective applications for the existing RTF measure, which as it is now does little in the way of participant screening. Staff explained that the ideal measure specification would likely require installation of a DHP in the main living area of a home with no non-electric, supplemental heating sources present, and with a clear signal that the home is occupied year around relying on electricity as the main heating. Because the savings really matter on the specifics of the application, staff proposed new screened applications that attempt to identify homes that rely heavily on electricity for space heating. Some of these screen applications are cost-effective.

Next month’s meeting (November 19) holds more SEEM calibration based updates to measures including MH Weatherization, a non-residential mid-stream lighting UES update and more. We hope to see you there!