RTF November 2019 Meeting Recap

November’s RTF Meeting was an exciting one as always. As the year winds down the RTF tackled updates based on the recent SEEM Calibration, made its annual update to a non-res lighting measure, and considered proposed measures for the year ahead.  If you couldn’t make the meeting, here’s what you missed.  

Due to the importance of lighting measures, the RTF was very engaged in the update to the Non-Residential Midstream Lighting UES this month.  These updates followed those approved for residential lighting earlier this year, updating costs based on the residential lighting update paired with program data and incorporating 45 lm/W standards for general purpose lamps in all states as well as including screw-in and pin-based MRs as a Washington only application.  Other major updates include adding TLEDs to the measure, updating the market share data based on Bonneville analysis for most lamps and NEEA analysis for the T8 replacement market, and updating the lamp wattages based on ENERGY STAR QPL data and NEEA analysis. Over all, savings and costs, especially for markets where the standard applies, went down and most applications remain cost-effective.    

Along a similar vein, the RTF updated the Manufactured Home Weatherization UES very much in line with how it recently updated the Single-Family Weatherization UES earlier this year, with a few differences. One being that rather than using the calibration approved in September, the RTF opted to use a calibration factor derived from an Idaho Power evaluation conducted in 2011-12, which resulted in an increase in savings.  Another difference is that costs for specifically MH attic insulation increased significantly due to a choice to base costs on MH programs rather than SF costs, which greatly affected the cost-effectiveness. This measure is considered Planning and the staff will be returning in 2020 with a Research Strategy. 

The RTF also updated the Anti-Sweat Heater Controls UES, adopting new savings and costs for the measure. To better account for differences in humidity there was a shift to modeling the measure in EnergyPlus, which resulted in separate measure identifiers for heating zone 1 and heating zones 2 and 3.  Updates resulted in reduced savings for HZ1, but increased for HZ2/3, and all applications remained cost-effective.  The RTF determined the status of the measure should be set to under review, and directed staff to research and revisit available data to reduce uncertainty in estimates if possible.  

The meeting rounded out with some sunset date extensions for Connected Thermostats, which is awaiting research, and a suite of SEEM HVAC related measures which will come before the RTF in the next few months. They also voted on which new measure proposals to allocate resources towards developing, a part two of which is also on the horizon for a future meeting.

The final meeting of the year is fast approaching (December 17) and will be focused primarily on updating Air Source Heat Pump measures with the newly calibrated SEEM.  We hope to see you there!