Guidelines for Reliably Measuring Energy Savings
“SBW’s work on the Guidelines has been extremely valuable. Their expertise has helped to establish Guidelines that focus on critical aspects of reliability. Equally important is the team’s thoroughness, which helps us think through all dimensions of a problem to ensure consistency in our decision making.”
For more than two decades, the Regional Technical Forum (a technical advisory committee to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council) has marshalled the best available expertise and research to determine the savings from energy efficiency products and services. Starting in 2010, the RTF decided that it needed to codify how it does its work to ensure consistent and transparent treatment of all efficiency measures. The RTF hired SBW to help them draft Operative Guidelines that tell the story of how the RTF will do its work.
The RTF applies the guidelines in judging the quality and reliability of energy savings estimates, costs, benefits, and the lifetimeof energy efficiency equipment and operating practices. The efficiency measures examined by the RTF, in accordance with the Guidelines, apply to all types of energy consumers and cover a wide variety of energy end uses, such as lighting, space and water heating, clothes washing/dryingrefrigeration, air conditioning, and cooking.
The Guidelines are a living document. Given that, SBW has assisted or led the development of many versions of it over the past decade. The evolution of the Guidelines has relied on contributions from generations of RTF members and the larger technical community that closely follows the work of the RTF. SBW collaborated extensively with RTF committees and full membership to refine both the techniques and the language of the Guidelines. Follow this link to the current version.