-: So, we are going to get going.
My name is Laura Arkley with Tetra Tech.
I have the privilege of leading
the Evaluation Measurement and Verification.
I'll call it EM&V from here on out,
because it's such a mouthful,
the EM&V effort for the Commission,
working with the Investor Owned Utilities, the IOUs
and Therese Harris is here with me from Commission Staff.
And we're looking forward to a great session today
going over 2020 accomplishments,
what we're doing on 2021 and what's on deck for 2022.
We are gonna start with introductions.
We're gonna start in the room.
And then on the phone,
we're actually gonna go by groups.
So I think we'll do group, a group in person on the phone.
So let's start with our utilities first.
We'll go in person.
And then who's on the phone.
I'm ready when you are.
(laughing)
-: I'm not.
-: Oh, you tell him he's first-
-: I was following Gary's instructions.
(laughing)
-: Well, Gary he doesn't even want to go first.
Gary, you go first.
-: Hi, I'm Gary Jones with Oncor.
-: Shea Richardson with CenterPoint Energy.
-: All right.
All right. On the phone please from the utilities.
Ron: This is Ron from office for A contestants.
We got a few of our team members on the board as well.
-: Great. Great to have y'all.
Woman On Phone: Good morning. Sorry there Shelly.
Okay. Go ahead.
Man On Phone: Good morning. (indistinct)
Anna: Good morning. This is Anna from El Paso Electric
with members of our team, as well.
-: Wonderful.
Jerry: , Hi this is Jerry Mobley with Xcel Energy
and we also have Brian and Rob O'Connell.
-: Fabulous.
(indistinct talking on phone speaker)
Man On Phone: I'm here with Ken Griffith
from CenterPoint.
-: Great.
Mary: This is Mary from CenterPoint Energy.
-: Wonderful.
Man On Phone: I'm here with Jeremy.
-: How bout EnterG? Kelly or Mark?
Do we have anyone from EnterG on?
I think, I think EnterG has only one I didn't hear on yet.
So I'll check back with that.
All right, so how about contractors that work directly
with the utilities, implementation, database, anything?
Derek is ready to go, so.
(laughing)
Derek, go first.
-: Sure, I'm Derek. I'm with Frontier Energy.
-: I'm Tim McConkey with TLC Companies.
Woman On Phone: With Frontier Energy.
-: Great. All right.
-: Steve Alison with ICF.
-: Yes, Phil?
-: Phil Odette, Inner Choice.
-: Ilya Odette, Inner Choice.
-: Great, wonderful to have y'all.
All right.
(indistinct talking)
-: I have Joey from TC.
Who does your onsites, came in from EM&V,
so I will go ahead and introduce him too.
All right, so our stakeholders that we're so pleased
to have you with us.
Back in the corner there.
(laughing)
-: 3rd grade choir.
Cyrus Reed with Sierra club.
-: Are you in our stakeholder group?
-: Yes, so my name is Brooke Commit.
I'm here on behalf of Opaque.
-: Okay, great.
Wonderful to have you.
All right.
On the phone, those from our stakeholder groups.
All right.
So the way we are going to do today's presentation
is I think it is really nice to go ahead
and take questions in person if they come up.
So let's still do that, but for those on the phone,
I know it's, it's, you know,
I can't see you raise your hand.
And so we're gonna pause at the end of each session
to take questions from those on the phone.
So we'll, we'll kind of have a mix of both questions
here in person and on the phone.
We did disable the chat on the Teams meeting,
just because we want us all to be able to, you know,
actively dialogue.
And since we can't see the chat here,
we do ask that you go ahead and ask your questions
on the teleconference, when we take that pause,
we definitely want your participation.
We just tried to facilitate it in a way
we could all hear the questions.
All right.
So getting going.
We're gonna start,
I'm gonna present first this morning,
going over 2020 accomplishments,
key findings and recommendations from the EM&V,
what we're currently doing for 2021.
And then we're really pleased
to have the Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute
will be joining us for an in depth study
that they did for Oncor and presenting those results.
So that will be next.
And then we will take a break
and Therese will introduce the TRM and the approval process.
And then Derek with EUMMAT will present the TRM updates.
And we are condensed, going from 9:30 to 12:30 this morning.
We figured we'd lose everyone on the phone
if we took a break, so.
All right.
So, this will be the last year when we show the map
of the various utility territories,
where you will see nine different territories.
AEP, Texas is one utility now,
but through 2020 they still had their separate goals
for the separate territories.
But, starting in 2021, we'll redo this map
and we'll be down to eight IOUs.
So you can see very good coverage across the state.
Some of the utility territories are very far flung,
like AEP's and Oncor.
Some of them are more concentrated around a particular area
like CenterPoint, so quite a diversity there.
Huge amount of savings delivered through the programs.
I can't help but get to the punchline.
I just work that way.
So, it is the greatest accomplishment yet,
even in the coronavirus pandemic,
that utilities had significant accomplishments.
So, looking at the energy savings
we're talking about over 30,000 homes annually
can be powered by that
using some of the averages out there.
There are a few different averages,
so I just pulled one and estimated on that.
And the demand reductions are, you know,
could be viewed as a smaller power plant.
And then we have those energy savings
are about 2 cents a kilowatt hour
and just under 12 for the KW reductions
based on the lifetime savings cost.
And we have more details on all of those results there.
Cyrus: And as a reminder, the lifetime savings cost,
those are different depending on the measure,
the amount of time-
Laura: That's, that's exactly right.
So those are based on the measure of life
for all the measures that are put in.
So we have some measures that last a long time,
such as insulation.
And we have some that which are shorter times like HVAC,
but, you know, still considerable.
Demand response is just one year.
So that's the one that is only had the one year lifetime,
because that is annual participation
to get those demand reductions.
All right.
So what are some huge accomplishments for 2020?
How can we not lead off with the fact
that the utilities were very successful,
responding to the challenges of the pandemic.
They all made time to talk with me and Therese
about how things were going, how they were responding,
just like work all over,
they had to immediately shift
to most utilities staff being remote, at least for awhile.
There were also some areas where it shut down any work
in the homes,
then things lifted and they had to figure out
and help contractors, work with contractors
to get them back out and safely into homes.
Then all of a sudden
we started having supply chain shortages.
So there, you know,
there were immense challenges that the utilities
and their contractors really worked hard
and rose to the occasion.
So, I think it's just really worth noticing
that that was accomplished
through a lot of hard work and commitment.
So, very successful response to the COVID pandemic.
We'll talk a little bit about some of the things
from going to remote QAQC in a few slides,
that is something that we might carry over,
some best practices that utilities might want to do
that going forward.
In that they continue to expand
energy efficiency offerings of the different ways
that they were reaching customers.
Some of that got an extra boost from the pandemic.
You'll see, when we get to the types of programs,
we saw more through an upstream or midstream model,
so where you're not working directly with the customers,
but through someone in the distribution chain,
a distributor for the midstream
or a retailer for the upstream.
So we did see an increase in that for 2020.
That is the way that some of the utilities
also were successful is, you know,
they did some more through upstream and midstream
in order to respond
to not being able to get into as many homes in 2020.
It's the highest cost effectiveness to date.
We'll see that graph.
It was 4.0 Statewide,
but it's also the highest avoided cost.
So that is a lot to do with it.
It goes down slightly in 2021,
and we don't quite know what it's gonna be in 2022 yet,
but we'll know that soon.
But that's not the only driver.
It was also that upstream and midstream model
was very cost-effective.
So, that also helped the cost effectiveness.
We already talked about the increased savings
and we just really want to point out
with all the challenges,
there were also things that really required
a lot of collaboration on improvements.
And, so despite everything going on
the utilities and EUMMAT worked very closely with staff
and the EM&V team
on some improvements that were identified
as being needed to be done.
The big one, which we'll talk about today
is the eligibility process for the low income
and Hard2Reach programs.
So add on,
they were already responding to TRM updates in the pandemic,
and then we had a big process improvement
that everybody had to work on together.
So, really just noting that collaboration,
even with all the challenges is really a big success.
All right.
I'm giving a little pause.
Cyrus, I don't think you're shy about jumping in.
Please don't be shy about jumping in at any time
when you have a question.
All right, this is the slide I talk about
where we show the savings by program type
and things are fairly consistent over the five years,
we do trend analysis over the last five years.
And, but the big change is what I already talked about.
We have that new kind of forest green bar,
which is the upstream, midstream.
Before that was kind of lumped into an other category.
It wasn't that much.
The utilities were already beginning to explore that more
and do more.
They did already have programs there, not all of them,
but about half,
but that is something we really saw expand in 2020,
partly because of the pandemic.
Cyrus: Could, Laura, could you give an example
or will you get into some examples of what that would be?
Laura: Yeah, I'm happy to,
or I am happy to put the utilities,
they both, both CenterPoint and Oncor
have a Upstream program.
Would you like to hear directly from them, Gary and Shea?
(Laura laughing)
Cyrus: Sure.
-: We actually have an Upstream lighting program.
We work with several big box retailers
and provide point of sale discounts on Upstream Lighting.
LED lights, excuse me.
And additionally,
we offer a $50 off coupon on smart thermostats
and that's, that's two of the programs we offer.
We're expanding it this year
to a commercial Midstream program for commercial HPAC.
-: We have very similar offerings too, Cyrus.
We have that streamlining
and thermostat programs as well.
-: And does the seller have to provide zip code information
or anything just so you know that section of new territory?
-: Yes.
-: Just don't want to,
I don't want to help those Louisiana folks.
-: Yeah.
(laughing)
All right, welcome.
It's great to have you.
Woman: Thank you.
-: Okay.
This is like I said, I can't help, but get to the punchline.
So you all already know that 2020 saw the largest savings,
but it's just kind of represents here
in both the demand reductions and the energy savings,
despite all the challenges, there were the highest savings.
So a mix of things going on, all that hard work, certainly,
you know, avoided costs probably helped out
and all the things that could be done as well,
but just noting that.
And then this shows the cost effectiveness by utility.
Getting to a little more detail
that I mentioned we would show behind that 4.0 Statewide.
That did range across the utilities from 3.3 to 5.0.
I wouldn't read too much into that range so much.
It's really just shows we, we want things over one, right?
So it really just shows all of the programs
are cost-effective.
There, the utilities have very unique territories,
different challenges.
So they're reasons, you know,
sometimes when you dig deeper
or you're trying to do more new construction,
you might see cost effectiveness go down,
but that's not a bad thing.
It just shows that they're doing more, so.
Great to have you.
All right.
We're gonna do a pause for, it's great to have a,
I know some of the new members that came in, but not all.
We're gonna do a pause for questions
for the people on the phone, after the overview.
So we'll get our three newcomers in person.
And if there's anyone on the phone
who has yet to introduce themselves,
that would be a great time to,
we did get going really right on the dot
and at least here in Austin, it's raining
and Austin traffic is bad anyways.
So, the rain probably didn't help.
All right.
This is a slide that we put together for the first time,
a couple of years ago and so we update it.
We actually have four slides that show this.
I just pull that one
because I think the point is just so important
to demonstrate to Cyrus's point about that.
When you put in an energy efficiency measure,
you just don't get the savings that year.
You get them for how long that equipment is going to be on.
So this is just one slide of showing the lifetime savings
from these programs, starting back the first year
that the Statewide EM&V started was,
it started in 2013 looking at program year 2012.
So that's as far back as we have data
and you see benefits going out to 2048 now.
We just update this slide every year.
So, it's not really changing all that much.
Just HVAC, Building and Shell are a big driver
of those savings that last over time.
So just really an important part of the story.
Cyrus: And to be clear, your overall achievements
you're only counting what was,
what was paid for in that year.
Laura: Right.
So that, you know, the slides where we're showing,
you know, the, you know, about 700 GWh lots.
And, yeah, you know, our big, our big savings.
Those are just the first year savings. Correct.
Yeah.
So we just show a different looks.
That's why we thought this was an important part
of the story, Cyrus, so that people understood
they're actually more savings than this,
but that's what the goals and everything are based on.
All right.
I am going to do a pause here
because those are kind of a high-level summary
on the program's accomplishments.
And now we're going to get into the EM&V effort.
So if you guys don't mind,
I'll pick on EM&V team members first.
I did already introduce Joey, so.
(Laura laughs)
-: Hi, I'm Sadie Bronk.
I'm with Energy Bees and we are working alongside Tetra Tech
for some qualitative EM&V.
-: Sorry. I'm Ashley Myers Black.
I'm with her.
(laughing)
Same thing.
-: Thank you.
-: Hi everybody. I'm Leshawn Johnson.
I'm the Program Implementation Manager at CenterPoint.
Nice to meet you.
-: It's so nice to meet you in person.
Yes, we've met on the phone.
So, welcome.
We've got Shea though, by himself.
(laughing)
All right.
Is there anybody on the phone
who didn't get in the initial roll call
that would like to introduce themselves?
All right.
So we did take questions here in person
as we were going on some of the accomplishments.
Are there any questions from the phone
on any of those accomplishments?
Krystal: Yeah, this is Krystal.
I just thought I'd say,
it's really difficult to hear
when the speakers are speaking.
Is there a microphone by chance?
-: There are, I just am not sure they're on.
Krystal: Okay. Thank you.
-: Well, this would be, this would be the speaker phone.
Let me, I don't know if that was near that.
I will try and stay closer to the phone.
Krystal, you've seen me in person, I walk around,
but I'll try not to walk around so much.
Therese: How about we repeat the questions?
Krystal: Oh, you're coming in loud and clear, Laura.
It's the guest speakers.
-: Oh, thank you so much.
Yes. Okay.
So, what we'll do going forward and thank you,
we should have thought to get some of these mic's hot,
but they aren't.
We will repeat the questions.
So since you can hear me okay,
I will just repeat the question.
So thank you so much, Krystal, for letting us know that.
Krystal: Thank you.
-: Thank you, you got what she was saying?
(Laura laughing)
Thank you, Therese.
All right.
So moving on to the EM&V infrastructure.
This is a slide people see every year,
but because we have new people,
just making sure everyone is aware of the infrastructure
behind the EM&V and how that rolled out,
that at first was in the Senate bill
and then really how it would operate,
then was addressed in a rulemaking
that led to other four year contracts
that selected EM&V contractor.
2020 is the first year in the third, four year contract.
And there are a lot of things in the rule
that give us a lot of guidance
as is also the case in lots of places in the rule.
There are places where we kind of have to talk about it
(Laura laughs)
and figure out what's inconsistent
and keeping with the rule in what we do.
All right.
Hi, it's great to have you.
(Laura laughs)
You're on next, so.
(Laura laughs)
Okay, so what do we do?
It varies a little bit every year,
since this was the first year of the four contract,
four year contract,
we did a little bit less than in other years.
Cause we normally, like right now,
2021 has been going on since June.
In the first year of a contract
you can't get going until the next year.
So we're really rolling out in February.
So we have a condensed timeline.
So it's pretty impact heavy.
So, what we do is for everything,
we get all the tracking data and for every single program,
every single plane savings,
we make sure that the EM&V team can verify that
with the program tracking data.
For residential deemed savings,
we do a hundred percent making sure that they match the TRM.
We cannot do that on the commercial side
because they're more complex.
All the calculations we need are not on the tracking system,
they're in the savings calculator.
So we have to sample and dive deeper on those.
One of the things that I think will be very interesting
to everyone from the new scope
is the amount of meter data we're using.
We have consumption analysis going on every single year.
In this first year,
we look at commercial lighting as the biggest contributor.
This is probably not gonna surprise anyone,
even trying to, you know,
go back with the meter data and take building types
that maybe were less effected by the pandemic.
We weren't able to get to kind of normal business operations
enough to really tease out the commercial lighting.
Again, that is we're trying to, how good is the TRM doing?
Do we need to revisit?
Are there things we need to do to get the TRM better?
So we will be expanding,
adding data onto that commercial consumption analysis
in 2021 to hopefully get some results
on commercial lighting.
So we can all look at it and figure out,
hey, is the TRM doing a good job
or are there some business types
we need to collect a little more data on,
those kinds of questions.
All right.
So through that impact evaluation piece,
where we look at all the savings
and we sample if we find things where we differ,
we provide those results to the utilities
and their contractors.
We discuss them to date.
We've always reached agreement on,
yes, here are some things that are a little off
and where we need to make savings adjustments.
Things can go up, things can go down.
So this just kind of shows by utility
where adjustments were made at the end of the day.
If you work in other jurisdictions,
you probably hear something called realization rates,
which is where we compare evaluated savings
to claim savings.
We pretty much force those to a hundred percent
here in Texas,
because we worked through this collaborative agreement
with the utilities to adjust anything
that the EM&V team finds.
Cyrus: Laura? Like as a percentage,
like if you look at that overall
that's way less than one percent, right?
Laura: Yeah, yeah,
because it's just for the sampled projects.
Cyrus: Oh, it's just for the sampled, okay.
Laura: Right.
It's just the sampled projects that we do that for.
And one of the reasons why we also only do that
for the sampled projects is we try to really work
and identify as where some of the recommendations come from.
Why are we off, so that we can put forward recommendations,
so that hopefully the context is broader
of kind of improving things,
so we're not off going forward or closer, so.
All right.
So, at the end of the day,
these are very successful programs and,
but they're operating in very dynamic markets.
So we just want to keep working together
to keep making the programs as good as possible.
So, you know, it is kind of our job too,
to look up there areas where we can offer opportunities
for improvement.
So from 2020, we do have 31 recommendations.
They're all detailed in the report.
And then if you don't want to go into all the details
in the executive summary,
we put together a table that summarizes the recommendation
and what we call action plan.
So, before this meeting staff and myself
meet with each utility individually,
and we talk about the results,
we talk about the recommendations
and we agree on that action plan.
So that shows how the utilities are gonna respond.
And then I report on that in, so that'll be in 2022.
So in the 2022 EM&V will report
on how well the utilities responded
to those recommendations.
So, I'm just gonna highlight a couple here today
and then move on
because we have lots of great content this morning.
So, on the commercial side,
we have the first three bullets on custom,
EM&V, reCommissioning,
the utilities really are looking at doing more
serving buildings more comprehensively.
So there are kind of some more questions
around some of these M&V approaches,
particularly more challenges came up because of the pandemic
and how do we get to normal operating conditions.
So, quite a few things around those this year.
And then we did have some recommendations
on the consumption analysis to help us strengthen that
on the commercial side.
So we can really get at those results,
hopefully this next program year.
And then moving on to residential,
we had a couple of things on the tracking system.
It didn't affect savings overall,
but just to keep an eye out
to make sure those deemed savings
are done in line with the TRM.
Some of them were clarifications.
Since we talked about the smart thermostats,
that is something we really seen expanded as a,
it is an energy saving device.
It is something that also can be tapped into
for demand response.
And we found things really in good shape
for those smart thermostats.
So, we were really pleased
with how the utilities are implementing
those smart thermostats
and the information that they are collecting at that time.
So I had alluded to earlier
how we really needed to collaborate with the utilities
this year on this low income process improvement.
And we had, TEPRI will be here to present.
So, I don't want to steal any of their thunder
because they're gonna give a great presentation.
But, to put a kind of high-level context,
we had forms use to certify households
coming into the low income and Hard2Reach programs annually
that really hadn't been revised for over a decade.
So, together we looked at let's,
let's look at improving those forms
with a couple objectives in mind,
making sure the services go to the intended audience
and how we do that in the most streamlined
and efficient manner as possible
while also hopefully getting the utilities
and their contractors more engagement and outreach tools,
as well as part of that process.
We did a lot of brainstorming together.
We came up with a lot of good ideas.
I think we were really excited about.
And then Oncor brought TEPRI in who has deep knowledge
in this area who kind of furthered the study
and brought back some other recommendations,
which were all used to revise these forms.
They will be going out to EEIP in November.
They're currently with the utilities for review.
We gave that a month long
so the utilities could also get feedback
directly from contractors working in the field,
people actually out there who would be using these.
So, they will be going out for EEIP review,
but they're a bit behind the TRM timeline,
which we'll talk about later this afternoon.
(phone beeps)
All right, load management.
A couple of takeaways from load management in 2020,
and a couple of recommendations we made there.
It was the highest number of participants
we had ever seen enrolled.
At the same time,
we saw more discrepancy between test event results
and what was contracted.
And there were reasons for that.
There were some decisions not to curtail certain customers,
such as hospitals given the challenges of the pandemic,
but we did recommend that the utilities
really do they're required to do an annual test events
so that they use those to refine their estimates
of the load management.
And also coming out of there
is making sure that the utility load management programs
do not include critical load customers
with one exception as a possibility, if it is,
if they do have backup generation
and they still think that they can perform,
we kind of heard mixed things from some hospitals,
yes, that's really important,
and they can go to backup, some hospitals,
it's not worth the flickering lights if they're in surgery.
So kind of, that is an option for critical load customers,
if they have backup generation
and feel they can safely participate.
So note that was a change in the TRM this year,
making that clearly defined for 2022.
All right. And then on the portfolio recommendations,
a couple of things we wanted to note here
is we do have an ETRM,
an Electric Technical Reference Manual
that one of the utilities has.
So we are trying to work closely with them
to support that streamlined process
in the savings calculation
and what kind of program documentation you need.
Solar PV that uses a DOE tool.
PV Watts is another good example.
We just happen to have a deep dive into Solar PV in 2020
of calculations that are using an API.
It's an electronic interface.
I apologize, I can't define that.
Anyone want to find an acronym for me?
(laughing)
It rolls off of Mark Bergen's tongue,
but it's the same thing
where there's less paperwork generated, right?
So, we're trying to really work, stay up,
this is the way the industry is going.
So working with the utilities as they roll these things out
to support that we can both be streamlined and transparent.
So kind of getting those tool goals.
And then Energy Bees who is based here in Austin
and is new on this four year contract I-
(indistinct talking on speaker phone)
Oh, yes? Was there a question on the phone?
No, I think just background.
(indistinct talking on speaker phone)
Oh, could we, do you mind going on mute?
Unless there's a question.
Gina, could you, could you mute, go back to mute all?
We're getting some feedback here.
So Energy Bees, again, thank you to all the utilities.
All the utilities took time out to talk to Energy Bees
to talk about Therese and I did the kind of initial calls
on how they were responding to COVID-19.
We talked about some of the ways to do remote QAQC,
and it came up in those calls.
Here would be great to see,
did we learn anything that could be a best practice
going forward.
So Energy Bees talked to all the utilities
and put together a very nice piece
that is in volume one of the report,
summarized in the executive summary of some takeaways.
And one of the big ones is at a hybrid QAQC
is probably appropriate going forward.
A lot of the utilities and contractors
really developed some good virtual tools
that they were able to use successfully,
but there were also,
there are some times where you really do need to go onsite.
So there are opportunities to kind of do a hybrid onsite,
virtual going forward.
And another recommendation they had at the time
that they did the interviews COVID was very, very low.
And they just were thinking about,
we get some severe weather here in Texas, right?
You know, Hey, this is really great
to bring into contingency planning.
So they also put forth that recommendation.
Of course, after they did that we also saw a spike,
which gratefully, it looks like we're coming off of now,
but that was kind of a really apropos at the time
we were talking to the utilities
of the value of contingency planning for that kind of thing,
as well as severe weather events.
So, there's some really good information
on what the utilities did and some best practices
that can go forward on the remote QAQC.
All right.
I am almost at time, I'm gonna-
Yes, oh, I'm sorry, Dana, you were just,
-: I'm just adjusting sorry.
(laughing)
-: Out loud there.
(laughing)
It's a mess out there right now.
For those on the phone,
we are now going onto the 2021 EM&V overview.
We're gonna be wrapped up here at 10:15 on that.
And then turn it over to TEPRI.
Does anyone have questions on the phone,
on what was done in 2020 before we move on?
All right.
So again, we do all the bare,
all the things we talked about that we do every year,
the tracking system verification of all the savings,
residential deemed, sampling of commercial,
but we also pick out programs
we're gonna keep a high priority on.
So I'm really gonna talk about those things.
A couple of things that we are going to do this year
is everybody probably remembers
the big TRM updates last year,
that came into effect in 2021
on some of the envelope measures.
In particularly we had some difficulties
around air infiltration where the,
there was normally distributed around zero overall,
but in Hard2Reach, we saw some savings.
So we really decided let's take a step back
and focus on Hard2Reach and the implementation,
successful implementation of air infiltration
for the Hard2Reach sector.
And then hopefully we start seeing results
and we can talk about expanding it back out.
So, that will be in this next scope
is when we do our data requests for all of 2021
in the new year,
we'll also be getting 24 months of meter data
for all of those,
get back up air infiltration in the Hard2Reach,
in the hopes that we can see some savings there.
We already had a huge,
we also had a big change in ceiling insulation
within our five baseline coming into effect.
Oncor had already implemented that,
and we were already doing, able to do analysis on that
and saw that that really did bring the TRM savings in mind.
But we also got some really valuable feedback
from the utilities and contractors
that there are those that are below.
So we really needed to make sure those homes
weren't getting missed without some incentives.
So we kind of have a, that was based on a midpoint.
We have slightly higher savings of a true RFI now,
for those that have very low levels of insulation,
we won't, since that's new,
we won't really know how that worked this year.
So we'll have to look at that later.
So really the focus is gonna be on air infiltration
this year.
But we'll be looking at the other things.
We are back on site.
Again, Joey is here.
Also based here in Austin and they have been onsite
and things have been going very well.
You know, we went over protocols
and things that we have not had any difficulties
at this time.
We will be communicating to the utilities if we do,
of course, run into any customer concerns
with our onsite work.
So, that's why we have the high priorities.
We have the residential programs continuing
given the fact that we will be doing that
consumption analysis for the air infiltration.
And then commercial programs always stay fairly high,
but we will hope, you know,
be continuing that consumption analysis as well.
And then on medium load management never falls below medium.
We always do a census review of interval meter data
for all the participants.
But small business was low in 2020,
cause we had identified several recommendations
that were ongoing.
It is coming back into medium priority for 2021.
And I believe that should be at
other than technical assistance.
And that, this is just something really important
we wanted to point out.
When the Commission did the RFP,
they included this task 40, that was kind of a catchall.
And it became very clear as we were all working together.
It was really great to put technical assistance in there
so that we can work hand in hand with utilities
when we have new measures, new types of projects, custom,
any questions so that we can all feel more confident
in the savings from these programs.
So with that, I'm gonna turn it,
I'm gonna pull up TEPRI's presentation.
And I will let you introduce yourself.
It's so great to have you.
Dana: Thank you.
-: Here is a clicker that does work well.
-: Okay. Thank you.
Do I need to wait for you to switch it or is it?
-: You know, I'm just pulling up your presentation
and then we should be good.
-: Hi everyone.
Cyrus: Hello.
-: Well.
(man laughs)
(indistinct talking)
Let me see.
So your presentation is a PDF,
so I'm just trying to figure out
how to get it to show that on PowerPoint.
Maybe if I take everything else off.
-: Oh, I'm sorry-
-: There we go. There we go.
I just had to get rid of everything else.
It must have a order that it...
-: Okay, let's see.
Make sure the clicker will click.
It looks like it will. Is there a presentation mode?
Do you think?
Fit to page, maybe.
That's closer.
Does that, can you guys see that okay?
(audience members talking over each other)
Okay.
And on the phone, can they see this as well?
Laura: So they have the slides.
Dana: Okay.
Laura: The person advancing them are very familiar
with my slides.
It might be helpful if you-
Dana: Just say next slide.
Laura: Yeah.
(women laugh)
-: Okay. I'm gonna try to pull this off.
Okay, so, hello everybody.
My name is Dana Harmon.
I'm the Executive Director
of the Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute.
It's certainly a pleasure to be with you all here today.
For those of you who attended the March meeting,
I believe it was March.
Laura: It got moved to March.
-: It was February. It got moved to March.
We talked about this study
that we conducted a little bit at that point.
And now we're here to follow up with the results.
I wanted to just take a moment to acknowledge
my colleague Jackie Moss,
who unfortunately wasn't able to be here
to present this work.
But she is the lead author on the study
and has really done a great job
and worked a lot with Oncor and with Tetra Tech,
and really deserves the credit for this work.
She's given me a lot of notes.
And so I'm gonna do my best,
but if there are questions that I can't answer,
I'll, may have to defer to Jackie.
So, for those of you who may not be familiar with,
with TEPRI or weren't there for the March meeting,
we are a 501C3 nonprofit research institute
based here in Austin, serving the state of Texas.
So we work with, with utilities,
with affordable housing providers,
with social service organizations,
both in the competitive market
and municipally owned utility areas
and co-op areas
with a mission to inspire lasting energy solutions
for underserved communities across the state.
So we do a lot of work in energy efficiency,
residential energy efficiency, of course,
but then also we do a good amount of work
with regard to access to solar,
utility assistance programs and those sorts of things.
Our work has four kind of key pillars.
Really, we work in research evaluation
is kind of our bread and butter.
We've noticed that with the proliferation of datasets
and so much data out there,
it's very helpful to offer decision-making tools
that can help utilities, policymakers
and others advance their program design.
We host a series of stakeholder forums,
convening stakeholders of different types
on different topic areas.
And then of course,
outreach and education directly within the community
and with industry members.
So that's a little bit about us.
So next I'll take it to the study.
This is a kind of a summarized version
of the presentation that,
the full presentation that we've given.
This study was conducted from January to May of this year
and Commissioned by Oncor
to develop a set of recommendations,
to provide assurance that the low-income
and Hard2Reach energy efficiency programs
are reaching the population they're intended to serve.
I think that along the lines was collectively,
there was collective alignment on that mission
throughout the whole process.
We thought it was very important to make sure
that we're avoiding instituting any additional barriers
to program participation.
So we didn't want to make it harder
for people to participate.
We've done a decent amount of research at TEPRI
showing there's, you know,
already enough barriers in place for program participation
and awareness.
And then we had the goal of operating
within the existing regulatory framework.
So new rule change, new policy changes required.
And so this time today is really us presenting the findings
and the analysis from that research.
Okay. For those on the phone,
I'm on a background information slide,
which I think is slide five.
(Dana chuckles)
So, I will touch briefly on just kind of the background
of the study.
You all are probably familiar,
but Texas utilities provide energy efficiency services
to low income customers
through a combination of the Hard2Reach
and low-income programs
as specified by the Texas Administrative Code.
So ERCOT utilities, such as Oncor
are required to spend no less than 10%
of each program years energy efficiency budget
on targeted low income energy efficiency programs.
That program follows similar guidelines
to the Federal Weatherization Assistance Program
and program income verification
and targeted low income programs
is considered sufficient
and not being addressed by this specific study.
But in addition to the targeted Low Income
Energy Efficiency Program,
all regulated Texas electric utilities
are required to achieve no less than 5%
of total demand reduction
through serving Hard2Reach customers.
And so that is really where we focus this study.
As Laura mentioned,
the utility eligibility certification forms
are maintained by the PUC.
There's a single family form and a multifamily form,
and both include a way to qualify for the programs
through other low-income programs and services,
which is referred to as category one,
as well as through self-reported income,
which is category two.
This study addresses alternatives
to that self-certification method
for the Hard2Reach programs.
And although,
although the programs are implemented differently,
both do use the federal poverty,
200% of the federal poverty line or FPL
as the income qualification for both programs.
So next I'll go into a little bit of the research questions.
As a research Institute kind of our,
our normal method is to clearly identify research questions
that we're looking to answer
at the beginning of our studies.
So as Commissioned by Oncor,
this study was designed to explore certification options
with the following questions.
What are the advantages
and disadvantages of different certification methods?
Since there was strong interests with,
really from all whom we spoke
in geography based eligibility.
We wanted to understand how effective is that method
in identifying low-income households
across Oncor service areas, specifically.
We wanted to know how many low income people
would be captured by a geo-eligibility model.
And I'll go into geo-eligibility a bit more in detail
in a few minutes.
And we also wanted to understand
how many people might fall outside of those areas,
if we use strictly geo-eligibility.
We also wanted to explore what other methods
were available and achievable
to efficiently qualify eligible households,
again, without setting up institutional barriers as well.
So, we followed our standard research process
of discovery analysis and developing recommendations.
So it really, that was kind of the three phases
with which we conducted this work.
During the discovery phase,
we gathered and synthesized information
about existing rules, procedures, programs,
we interviewed several utility stakeholders,
other implementers, and other stakeholders,
and really try to tease out knowledge gaps
that would serve as the foundation for subsequent phases.
During the analysis phase,
then we evaluated the materials that we collected
and the opportunities that we identified
in the discovery phase.
We collected insights from other geo-eligibility programs
across the country.
We gathered data sources
and compared methods of geo-eligibility.
And we also continue to collect insights
from across the state and across,
really from a national perspective,
reaching out to partners across the Southeast
who may be facing similar challenges
with energy efficiency programs.
And so this, this report is a high-level summary
of those recommendations.
Okay, for those on the phone.
Now I'm on the theme slide, which is slide eight.
So there are a couple of key themes
that really emerged from this work
that we wanted to highlight
from the stakeholder interviews.
Firstly, there was consensus among the people
with whom we spoke that,
and this is within and outside of Texas,
that any barriers that we introduced to eligibility
is likely to create more problems than we want to solve.
If it, it's already hard to serve these households
and we wanted to make sure
that we weren't putting up additional barriers
to program awareness or trust or language differences
or home ownership.
There was also a reluctance
from really all the parties that we spoke with,
utilities and implementers alike,
to assume responsibility
for handling personal identifying information.
If asked to provide documentation of household income
with tax records or pay stubs,
a customer may either knowingly
or inadvertently provide incomplete
or inaccurate information.
And we at TEPRI agree that neither contractors
nor implementers nor utilities should be responsible
or accountable for verifying the accuracy
of that information.
So we wanted to look for other, other options.
So that comes to our primary recommendations
for alternatives.
So as time allows, we can go into details,
more details on each of these.
But first primary recommendation
is to institute a geo-eligibility process.
And so that is the process by using an address to look up,
to verify that a premises within the boundaries
of some geographically determined area.
We recommend two different HUD based geo group,
geographic datasets, which I'll go into here
in a few moments.
The second option for recommendations
is real-time verification.
So we agree that a third party model of income verification,
such as the LIDA List, that's maintained by Solar X,
for those of you who are familiar.
Provides a greater degree of confidence,
but we also acknowledge that it can slow down the process
and we appreciate the need
for real-time, on-site verification.
And so we recommend exploring ways that a third-party list
could be created that is,
can enable real time address verification
that could occur onsite through a web based tool.
We'll go into a little bit more detail about that
recommendation as well.
Thirdly, we recommend using opportunities
to leverage existing programs.
And so to avoid,
in the spirit of avoiding barriers
and increasing confidence,
it's important to allow redacted documentation
of participation in social service programs
as proof of eligibility.
And then finally, we recommend that self-certification
does continue as permissible as the last result.
If those, as the last resort,
if those other three methods don't suffice.
Let me pause there,
just to, that's a lot of information so far.
Any questions so far?
Yes, Cyrus.
Cyrus: On that third bullet,
are other programs also did they use the 200%
of the federal?
Because I know in Austin Energy,
they started going to the 80% of AMI versus 200% of-
Dana: That is correct.
So not all programs do use 200% FPL,
some use 150% of FPL and some will use 80% AMI
or even 60% AMI.
But what we have found is 200% FPL
does tend to be the most relaxed,
meaning if other program eligibility should suffice
for that 200%.
Cyrus: Okay, so you don't need to try to compare the-
Dana: Exactly. Exactly.
Cyrus: Okay.
Dana: I can check with Jackie
just to make sure we can look
at exactly how those numbers fall out
because household size matters as well.
But, that is the conclusion that she'd come to,
that 200% is sufficient.
Any other questions?
Okay.
So next I'll go into a little bit of detail
on each of the recommendations
and really what those may look like.
So again, we envisioned geo-eligibility
as kind of the first step in the process.
Frankly, it's the easiest to verify,
it's easiest to access the datasets
and frankly, it can be done relatively simple
through a platform that can access those data sets.
So if a premise address meets the criteria,
they fill out a form
which includes self certifying their income
and are ready for service.
And so it's fairly basic.
So, the study did show
that geographic based eligibility verification
is emerging really across the US as an innovative approach.
One case study that's included in the materials
is from NYSERDA,
which is using geo-eligibility quite successfully.
In our analysis, we looked at both the LMISD group data,
which is the low, HUD low-income summary data,
as well as the QCTs, which are HUD qualified census tracts,
which use different eligibility criteria.
Each approach has its advantages.
And, we were going along the lines of trying to pick one
and making one recommendation.
But I think come to the, came to the conclusion,
along with Tetra Tech and Oncor
that it makes sense to try to use both.
And so if either of those data sets do confirm eligibility,
that would be our recommendation
to certify as eligibility in the process.
For this study,
we were really focusing on Oncor's service territory,
but we believe that this process would work across the state
and those data sets are available publicly
and across the state of Texas.
So next, so that's kind of step one,
then step two for people who would not qualify
based on geo-eligibility,
we suggest having another way
to achieve real-time onsite verification there
while the contractor is on the premise.
And we envisioned this looking something like
the Low Income Discount Administrator List that exists now,
which is being accessed by retail electric providers
on a monthly basis.
We, this list is an example.
We don't yet have permission to use this list specifically,
but we would like to explore opportunities
to find another agency to partner with
so that we can maintain a database of participation
in a program that has income qualification
at the same threshold of the 200% federal poverty line
or less.
Because primary eligibility verification issue
involves the Hard2Reach single family residential programs.
It's especially important to make sure
that this is achievable in real time there onsite.
And we recognize that time delays are meaningful barrier
to customer participation and effective implementation.
And we believe that this would be both cost effective
and solve for privacy concerns
because we're not having to collect customer information
there onsite.
And they're paired with the GFL eligibility method,
it could improve confidence while,
while avoiding, you know, costly time delays.
Cyrus: Dana, when you say agency partner,
does that mean state agency or just?
Dana: Good question. Sorry.
We were referring to community action agencies.
So we work with a lot of the agencies who administer LIHEAP,
which is the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program
funding and Weatherization Assistance Program funding
are the partners that we'd like to explore.
You know, again, the LIDA list,
there's a list already maintained.
That would be nice if we're able to access,
but we think there are a couple of other ways
to access those lists as well, to consolidate and access.
Cyrus: And as an example,
TDHCA doesn't have something like this,
given that they oversee a lot of those programs.
Dana: We have reached out to TDHCA to explore this topic,
and frankly not gotten very far down the path
of whether there's something there that could,
we could access,
but we do think that that would be an avenue
worth exploring.
And just for clarification, we're also,
when we're talking about other social programs,
we're talking about SNAP, Medicaid, TANF,
and those types of participant, programs,
in addition to potentially LIHEAP
and the Weatherization Assistance Program.
Okay.
Next, and these, I guess these two real-time verification
and leveraging existing programs do kind of go together
to really bucket it under that,
that's kind of second recommendation.
But we do think that if we're not able to access that list,
then allowing a customer to show proof of participation
in those programs that could be captured and documented.
But, with personal information redacted,
so crossed out in a way that doesn't share,
it doesn't encourage a contractor
to collect personal information,
could be another opportunity to leverage existing programs
that have, that meet the income qualification criteria.
Here is a very fuzzy picture.
I apologize of the list of the category one programs.
But there, and again, SNAP, Medicaid, TANF
and others would be included.
And a lot of this is in a memo created by Tetra Tech
January of this year?
Laura: Yeah, it may be in the state-wide report,
the volume one.
There's a detailed section.
Dana: Thank you. Thank you.
I think the one,
one program that we did not see that included
was the Lifeline program,
that was one recommendation that we had to add.
Okay.
Next for those following along on the phone,
I am now on slide 14,
which is the user journey of the Oncor proposed
single family verification process.
What you'll see in yellow there
is where TEPRI was recommending additional amendments
to that process
and where kind of these key recommendations will fit in.
So when the,
when the service provider looks up the premise
and the address in the tool,
we suggest that the underlying database use both,
both of those datasets,
the LMISD block root dataset
and the HUD qualified census dataset to,
to verify through geo-eligibility as a first step.
If a customer passes that step, move on, you know,
capture the information and then we can move on.
If a customer is either,
is eligible based on either look up method,
the last step would be to allow self-certification.
Is there a way to move this up just a little bit?
There we go. Okay.
So next I want to go through just a few details
specific to Oncor's service territory.
Again, I think this data could be easily accessible
for other service territories as well.
But we really wanted to understand how this process
would work based on, based on their service territory.
So again, just kind of a difference
between the two data sets that we're recommending,
the LMISD dataset issues
for the community development grants, block grant program.
It operates with their resolution of block group
and a qualified block group is one in which 51% or more
of its population is at or below 80% area median income
or AMI.
This data set comes from the US Census
American Community Survey,
which is updated every five years.
The other data set is the Qualified Census Tracts dataset,
which had used,
that produced the low Income Housing Tax Credit, or LIHTC.
This method, Qualified Census Tracts,
based on AMI as well.
This formula is a bit more complex
and these are Jackie's notes.
The easiest way to explain it is that for the most part
tracts must have 50% of households with incomes below 60%
of area median gross income,
or have a poverty rate of 25% or more.
And this dataset comes from the household account
from the 2010 bicentennial census,
plus three sets of five-year tabulations from ACS.
If y'all have any questions on that you have to ask Jackie.
(audience laughing)
But, I do know there's, again,
the recommendation was each of the datasets
has its advantages and disadvantages.
And again, we recommend using both to qualify customers.
Okay.
Next, to give you a sense of our analysis,
we included these maps of the Oncor service territory.
The one on the left shows three years worth
of Oncor low-income weatherization installations
relative to LMISDs,
and the map on the right shows one year of data for QCTs.
We generated these maps for QCTs
for each of the three years since the data updates annually.
Whereas LMISD is every five years.
And so it changes left, less often.
So, really our objective here was to evaluate
how effective each method was in identifying
low-income households in Texas.
And so these maps offer a glimpse of the Statewide coverage
of the two methods.
And you'll notice that the LMISDs capture more areas
because that data is at a finer resolution.
Here's just a little bit about the process,
which I won't go into in detail,
but really to perform the analysis
that we described just a second ago,
we associated Oncor service area zip codes to block groups
and census tracks to kind of do that match
with that look up,
which is the same method that we would recommend
the platform would do behind the scenes
to perform this check.
Okay. So what we found.
So again, specific to Oncor service area,
this summarizes the results,
and it's really meant to answer the question,
if we use this geo-eligibility method,
how many low income people would be included
and how many non low income people
would be unintentionally ineligible
just for this geo-eligibility method.
And what we found is that while sending fewer percent
of people in QCTs are low income,
only 31 low-income, percent of low-income individuals
reside in QCTs.
So they're reliable,
QCTs are reliable in excluding ineligible households,
but there reach isn't all that large.
Conversely, 70% of the people in the LMISD block groups
are low income and 59% of low income people
are in LMISD block groups.
And so with the LMISD method we improved the reach,
which is why we came to the recommendation of using both.
And so we think by both methods,
we capture, help households who may be in only one
of those two types of categories.
And again, this information is in your packets,
if you're interested in looking in more detail there.
So in conclusion,
kind of as a result of all of this analysis,
we, to summarize, we conclude that the following measures
are appropriate solutions to increase confidence,
reach the intended customers and avoid institution,
additional barriers.
So build a geo-eligibility lookup tool
that all utilities can share
that integrates the existing dataset
using both models.
Again, we recommend.
Secondly, explore ways to share data
from social service agencies
to cross reference their recipients address
to the premise address,
which would allow contractors-
-: [Automated Voice On Phone] You've been muted.
To unmute yourself, press *6.
Dana: Jaime?
(audience laughing)
So that process would allow contractors to,
to look up an address
and see if a customer is income eligible
without seeing or handling any personal information.
So for customers who don't qualify
using one of those two look up methods,
allow documentation to show active participation
in qualifying programs.
And in the absence of all of those,
of that self certification,
we recommend the self-certification persist
as a last resort method for customers
who don't fall with any of the above categories.
And to understand that that's an issue,
we do recommend an audit process
of a sampling of self-certified households
in Oncor's compliance audit.
Cyrus: Laura, Amy was saying that she thinks they lost
the feed on the Teams meeting.
So I think you both get muted.
Laura: Okay.
Cyrus: Or at least some people are affected.
Laura: Okay, let me let them know.
Dana: Is there something I can do here?
Laura: No, I think I'll just give a quick call
and let them know some people are off.
But I would say just for time, I would keep going, Dana.
-: So, this is actually all I had to present.
So I think we can open up to questions at this point.
-: I have a general question.
I love the idea of a lookup tool
that all utilities could use.
Do you have any sense of a timeline for something like that?
-: Well-
-: Have you discussed it all?
-: And the cost. And the cost.
-: Yes.
Man On Phone: We can no longer hear the presenter.
Woman On Phone: Yeah, we're working on it at the moment.
-: Maybe we can actually repeat these questions.
So we are looking into developing-
-: [Automated Voice On Phone] You are not allowed to unmute.
To raise your hand, press *5.
You are allowed to unmute.
To unmute yourself, press *6.
(audience members laughing)
Cyrus: Do you think you have to unmute yourself-
-: Maybe, did I put, muted it somehow?
Laura: I bet so.
Can you hear us now?
-: Can you hear us now?
-: [Automated Voice On Phone] Hand raise.
(laughing)
-: I think, was it *6?
Gina: Laura, are you having problems?
Laura: Yep.
Gina: Can't hear you, can you check your mic?
(phone beeps)
Laura: Can you hear us now?
-: [Automated Voice On Phone] You are no longer muted.
Laura: Great.
Gina, can you hear us now?
Gina: Yes, we can. Thank you.
-: Oh, great. We accidentally got muted.
So, we're unmuted now.
-: Do you think I did that with this?
I'm sorry.
I don't know what happened.
-: I think it's our first hybrid.
(laughing)
Sadie: So, maybe could you repeat the question?
-: Sure, yeah. I'll be happy to.
So the question was whether we had looked into developing
a platform, a look up tool,
and if we had an idea of a timeline or you know,
about how much that would cost.
I think that the good news is
from a platform development standpoint
is a fairly easy query.
It's a large data set,
but it's not all that complicated.
And so Oncor has asked us to go ahead
and start developing a prototype for testing.
That would be really, you know,
we're kind of looking for the, to test it with a,
to pilot it with a few contractors first
and then potentially roll it out more and more largely,
but it's relatively, relatively cost-effective.
Now that would also be for that first
geo-eligibility lookup,
not necessarily the second look up for participation
in qualifying programs.
That one, again, the,
I think the lookup is fairly simple.
The challenge is getting access to the data sets.
And so that, that's the piece that we're-
Cyrus: And that's why I asked about THCA,
because I feel like they would have,
they must collect.
I know they do spot checks of all the-
-: They would as well.
And certainly the agencies themselves for it would
but there's what 41 agencies.
Cyrus: 40, yeah whatever.
-: Yeah. And so I'm just not sure at what level
that personal information gets rolled up.
And the other thing that we do need to be careful of
is matching a qualifying customer with an address.
So a name with an address is, you know,
the piece that we'll have to make sure we can work out
the kinks to.
-: Dana, on the TDHCA you let me sort of get some
of the areas or the properties that are participating.
-: Yes. Yeah.
-: So, you might need to work that way
and a lot of times they like to have a certain percentage
of their properties that are considered either VLI or LI.
So that might also be a way of, your geographic areas.
-: Okay, yeah. That could be worth exploring. Certainly.
So I think in terms of sort of where we are now
in this process,
is let's move forward on the geo-eligibility piece
and kind of develop that tool and that platform
while we explore kind of that step two
and look for other kind of list
that we can have access to that would,
that we could potentially hold into, ideally the same tool.
Although I don't want to speak out of turn on that.
Gary: No, that's correct. Yes.
-: Okay. Yeah.
Any other questions?
-: So our intent is to have this prototype tool
up and running by early to mid January.
In time for our 2022 programs.
-: I think I had 45 minutes. I'm not sure I've taken that.
I think maybe on the phone, I know we,
I'm not sure at what point we cut out,
but if there are any other questions,
we'd be happy to take them.
Laura: Great, I think, are we good?
-: All right.
Laura: Yeah, thank you so much.
-: Yeah, of course. My pleasure.
-: So, we are gonna break til 11, does that sound good?
We'll break till 11.
-: Wait, I, sorry I have one more question.
On the, on that first type of lookup tool, or even using it,
as you mentioned for Gina,
having that in place for January.
Is that expense one that can be part of the regular,
is that considered a regular sort of administrative cost?
-: It's okay.
-: But, what about building, you know,
a bigger utility wide tool?
Is that something that could be paid for
as part of the VE programs
or that would be something the Commission
would need to look at?
-: They would probably need to consider it.
-: I'm trying to think about, out loud about ways that maybe,
you know, we could get additional money from like THCA
or some of this, the large amounts of funding coming down.
Maybe there's a way to not have rate payers pay for.
I mean, I think it's a good tool,
but maybe there's another funding stream for it.
-: Certainly worth exploring.
-: Yeah, definitely.
-: Thanks.
-: Great. Anything else?
All right, for those- Hi, is there a question?
(indistinct talking on phone)
Man On Phone: But you guys can also kind of pitch that
and that was great.
Like any kind of (indistinct)
(audience laughing)
-: All right.
I think we, we're gonna break
for those on the phone until 11.
(laughing)
So, hang on or call back at 11.
-: Back, everybody.
Welcome back on the phone and in the room
and it was nice to have a short break
and reconnect with people before we proceed,
so we are on time.
so I'd like to kick off the TRM portion of today's meeting
and just start with the approval process.
So the Commissions Evaluation Measurement
and Verification Contractor,
which is Laura with Tetra Tech.
Review the TRM at least annually for needed updates
and already we're on version 9.0.
You know, we, I think our very first version
was published in 2014 after quite a bit of work in 2013.
So we've come a long way and the TRM is greatly expanded.
So, any utility or stakeholder can request additions
or modifications to the TRM
as long as they provide documentation
specific to the request.
The second really important point
is that the Commission staff approves of TRM
using the EEIP process.
And why this is important is it allows the stakeholders
to weigh in on the proposed changes and modifications.
So it is an open and transparent project.
The regular TRM process,
if you want to go to the next slide.
Oh, you're-
Laura: I'm sorry (women talk over each other)
(women laugh)
Therese: okay. So the TRA,
the TRM project is collaborative.
Like I said, the EM&V contractor does an annual review.
There is input received
from the group of utilities called EUMMAT,
which is the Electric Utilities Marketing Managers at Texas.
They make, they make updates
as well as individual utilities can propose updates
along with documentation,
proposed updates can come from the EEIP.
It can also come from EM&V research.
Is that next slide? Oh, yep.
Laura: Did you want to, I'm sorry.
Did you, here we go.
Therese: Yes, okay. So the goal-
(Presenter chuckles)
The goal of the updates is to improve the accuracy
of the deemed savings measures,
expand savings, opportunities for electric customers,
and to clarify the program delivery documentation
and tracking requirements.
And so with that, I'd like to turn it over to Laura.
-: Great. Well, I get to turn it over to Derek here,
so we're very pleased to introduce Derek
with Frontier Energy.
Who's gonna present on behalf of EUMMAT.
-: Should I use this or do you wanna try and follow along?
-: Do you want to use that?
-: Unless we mute ourselves again.
-: Yes, okay.
-: I'll try to use this.
-: All right. Let me just get you pulled up here.
-: Seems straightforward.
There's just back arrow and forward arrow.
-: Mhm.
-: All right.
All right. Hi everyone.
I'm Derek Newman with Frontier Energy
presenting on behalf of EUMMAT.
And so we're just gonna go over a few of the key updates
to this year's TRM.
I'm not gonna go over, over everything in detail.
If I did, we'd be here for too long, but, and honestly,
most of you probably aren't that interested
in the details of each measure.
But, I will say this year's update
was a little bit more qualitative than quantitative.
Last year, we went through pretty much every measure
of the TRM, except for a few sections
that I'll talk about a little bit later
in the presentation today,
but we went through each measure
with more of a fine tooth comb last year
and make sure all the citations were current.
As we were just talking about here,
the TRM is getting into the later versions now.
We're already at 9.0.
And even before the TRM existed,
deemed savings were filed separately.
And so some of these measures were pretty old
and hadn't been reviewed in some time.
So that's kind of what last year's
very thorough review was for.
And so this year we're trying to do a little bit more
cleaning up of the, the language around the savings.
So explaining different applications or scenarios
that might be uncommon,
but needed to have some additional explanation.
And so you'll see that as a theme,
not as many changes to savings values this year,
as we've seen in some of the previous years,
but certainly some.
Start with volume one.
The, the peak methodology is unique in Texas,
very different than it is in other states.
And so we're always having to clarify
certain scenarios there.
One of the ones this year is just that with the,
the fact that in Texas,
you can claim either winter or summer peak,
the higher of the two.
We did want to just point out that you can,
you can claim either/or as long at,
for a site that has multiple projects
occurring at that site,
but only if they have independent operations.
So I have a few examples here on the slide.
But, an example where you would not be able to claim
both winter and summer for the same project
would be an HVAC system that also had BAS controls,
because both of those are operating in tandem.
On the other hand,
if you looked at something like residential lighting.
That if you did lighting and HVAC in a residential setting,
the lighting is allowed to claim winter peak,
and the HVAC would claim summer peak
unless you're replacing an electric resistance furnace.
In which case you could, you could claim the winter peak.
So there's lots of variations here,
but in that second example,
the lighting and HVAC equipment are separate systems.
And so that can also occur with the same measure.
If you look at commercial lighting, for example,
the interior lighting is allowed to claim
summer peak savings,
but the outdoor lighting would be allowed to claim
winter peak.
So those are two examples of that are detailed
a little bit more in volume one.
But that was a key,
key thing we wanted to point out. Phil?
-: So you may have some measures that say,
save in summertime and others that save in wintertime.
-: Correct.
-: And some, that save both.
If you have a measure that saves both
why do you all have to claim one or the other,
why can't you claim both?
-: Well, it's, it's not, they're not additive.
It's a savings.
Phil: But there's a benefit.
There's a summer and winter benefit.
-: Right.
The way that the measures have always been reported,
it's the maximum benefit that a certain measure provides,
whether that, and initially it was just summer.
Most states will have only either summer or winter.
We've had our own issues with, with winter storms,
not just this last year, but a while back,
I think back in 2012,
because I think that led to the introduction
of this kind of dual peak approach and-
Phil: But there is value in measures that save both.
-: So, so Phil, we don't necessarily disagree,
but this is really clear in the rules.
So in under the current rule,
there's no flexibility in that.
It's very clear.
It's winter or summer peak.
So, if the rule ever opens,
that's a great point to make,
but it's not anything that EM&V team
or the utilities can do anything about.
-: And I know a number of groups like Sierra Club
have advocated for a bigger role in part,
because we want to focus on both winter and summer.
And that's, it would be nice to clarify that.
-: Okay.
-: Thanks.
And another thing I wanted to just point out
this isn't so much an update to the TRM.
Although we did add a few citations,
pointing people to the Texas Efficiency website,
It's a website maintained by the utilities.
So there are several things that have been built
into the TRM that if implementers, for example,
may want to extract and put into database form,
that could be a little bit difficult.
You had to reproduce some of those tables.
So a lot of those things are now being made available
on the Texas Efficiency website.
The example I have here relating to peak methodology
is in the TRM.
We have a list of the highest probability peak hours,
and we have temperature associated with those hours,
but there are lots of additional data points available
in these TMY weather files.
So all of those files for all five of the climate zones
will be available on Texas Efficiency,
as well as a climate zone mapping,
mapping each county to it's relative climate zone,
an EOL spreadsheet just to point out year to year,
what's changed from one version of the TRM to the next,
the Lighting Survey Form Fixture Code listing,
which is the primary tabulator that's used.
Although other calculators are available
for specific utilities.
But these fixture codes form
what we call a Standard Wattage Table.
I'll talk a little bit more about that
when we get to commercial lighting.
And this is not a change,
but I just also wanted to remind everyone
that the residential HVAC tables,
which make up probably over half of volume two
in terms of volume or size,
those tables are also available in a Excel spreadsheet form
on Texas Efficiency.
So moving on to volumes two and three,
there were some high-level changes
that were consistent across both.
So I'll touch on those here
rather than for each individual measure
and consistently be repeating myself.
But, we did a review of all of the,
this was kind of following up on last year's update
where we reviewed all the various aspects of each measure,
including measure life.
And for those, we have quite a few measures,
maybe about a third of the measures in the TRM,
refer to the database of Energy Efficiency Resources,
or DEER, for that value.
And they've kind of consolidated all their reports
into this software called the READI or READI tool.
And so we verified all of those values
against the latest and greatest that exists in that report.
And then on the RUL side.
So for measures that have an early retirement baseline
where you're replacing the equipment
before the end of its natural life,
we have these tables that associate the age of the equipment
with how many expected years that equipment
would be expected to continue operating.
And, but you're only eligible to use those tables
for equipment that was installed
after the current code existed.
And so we have some formatting on each of these tables
that has to be incremented annually,
just to kind of clarify which years are eligible.
And this will be an update that will happen consistently,
but still something to pay attention to.
We do,
you might be wondering why we don't just get rid
of the values for the years that are not eligible.
We try to maintain those
because at some point the code or standard will change
and we don't want to have to go back
and recreate those values.
So they are still listed.
They're just made ineligible
through some formatting on the table.
Okay.
Residential lighting.
So volume two in general,
the residential volume went through quite a bit of changes
last year in part due to the EM&V teams
consumption analysis.
This year, volume two didn't have as many changes,
the kind of higher impact changes
happened on the commercial volume, volume three.
So, and for this measure, the lighting measure,
the only changes were to the measure is,
has always been focused around screw-in
or plug-in lamps, LED lamps.
And we just clarified that the methodology can also apply
to integrated LED fixtures,
something you see more on the new construction side
and some new construction programs
use the prescriptive savings from these individual measures.
So that clarification was made.
And then also, Laura mentioned the focus on midstream,
especially in light of the pandemic.
So there were some confusing changes.
I think it's fair to say.
Related to midstream lighting last year,
we attempted to kind of improve the implementation
or streamline the implementation
between the residential and commercial measure.
When you do midstream for certain lamps,
you split your savings between residential and commercial.
Cause you're not certain where that that lamp
is being installed.
And that methodology is discussed in detail in TRM,
but the attempts to streamline that implementation last year
was incomplete.
So we, Tetra Tech issued a guidance memo
kind of reverting back to the TRM 7.0 methodology.
And this year, we didn't change anything
relative to how the measures implemented,
but we just removed some of that language
that had been added last year
to align with Tetra Tech's guidance and that EM&V memo.
There are some more changes related to midstream,
but that's,
I'll talk about that when we get to the commercial slide.
All right.
So for HVAC there,
I probably won't touch on some of these things.
If it's just a unit correction, those are important.
But I would just point out
that when there are things like this,
unit corrections that have a impact
on the savings calculation,
just because it's being updated in the TRM now
doesn't mean that the savings were wrong last year.
In most cases, these things are found early on
when utilities are updating their databases
and deemed savings calculations
and they're corrected in real time,
but those things are not worth issuing a new version
to the TRM.
So we flag those things for the next year's TRM updates.
So whenever you see things like unit correction,
that's just kind of some of that, those housekeeping items.
And, for central AC and heat pumps,
we've seen a growing issue more so with mini splits
and you see here on the slide that the same updates
were made to the mini-split measure,
but we're seeing a growing issue
where you have high seer systems
or high part load efficiency systems
that affect the energy savings calculation from the TRM,
but they have EER or full load efficiency ratings
that are not compliant
with the minimum efficiency requirements from the TRM.
And there is no EER code requirement.
So, we did decide to go ahead and update the eligibility
to say that if the system did not meet the TRM guidance
for the minimum EER,
that that would not make that system ineligible
to claim savings.
It just means that you're only able to claim energy savings,
be it cooling or heating and winter demand savings,
but you would not be eligible to claim summer demand savings
unless it meets that minimum EER thresholds from the TRM.
And the other clarification.
So when you look at the HVAC tables,
I mentioned that there's a large number of them,
but they're specified based on the capacity
of the system and the efficiency of the system.
And so, the capacity we've gotten the question
over the years about whether
or not you're supposed to use cooling capacity
for the cooling savings
and heating capacity for the heating savings.
But, we did clarify
that you were supposed to use the cooling capacity
for all of the savings,
that adjustment for the difference between cooling
and heating capacity already takes place
within the deemed savings derivation.
We also have a,
a large capacity HVAC measure that applies to measures
in systems that are sized regular
than what you'd normally find in a typical home.
So this is like 5.4 to up to 20 tons,
probably not finding something that often
near the 20 ton value,
but we added, this measure applies
to both standard AC and heat pump,
but also to ground source heat pumps.
So we added some coincidence factors
to kind of allow that measure to apply for ground source.
And then another kind of unique situation
that came up with room ACs.
We were finding some systems
that were on the Energy Star qualified product listing,
but did not seem to comply
with the minimum efficiency requirements
on Energy Star's spec and also in the TRM.
And come to find out
it was because there are certain systems
that have what they call connected functionality,
means they're tested for demand response capabilities.
And if those systems have been tested in that way,
they receive a 5% credit to their Energy Star qualification.
So we added that additional tier
so that those units would be eligible.
And in the TRM, we like to focus mostly on savings,
but we do occasionally get involved in,
in further implementation guidance,
especially if it's consistent for all applications
of that measure.
So for connected thermostats, smart thermostats,
we did just add some guidance
instructing against the use of emergency heat settings
when installing a smart thermostat
in combination with a heat pump.
That's just to avoid additional heating consumption in,
against the way that the system was designed to be used.
All right, so the envelope measures.
Ceiling installation was one of the measures
that was most effected by last year's update.
As part of the EM&V team's consumption analysis,
they found that the TRM savings
did not align with what they were seeing in the field
for some of the lower R-value homes.
And so, for those familiar with this measure,
savings are specified for different bins
of starting R-value.
And we removed, in last year's update,
we removed the R0 and R1 to four categories,
and that meant that the lowest available baseline
was R5 and up.
And so it had a little bit of an unintended consequence
where we saw a pretty dramatic decrease in participation
among those homes that had the lowest insulation values,
in part that's because contractors were finding it difficult
to compensate themselves for the increased material
that they would need to insulate those homes.
So, because there's a little bit of a quirk
with the way that the savings are modeled for the TRM,
the lowest category is R5 to R8
and those savings are modeled based on the midpoint
of that range, so R6.5
So since,
it is still consistent with the EM&V findings
to go down to R5, we established a new lower tier again,
to apply to anything less than R5.
Then it would be based on that R5 set point
and therefore still be consistent
with the consumption analysis findings.
So that was added back. It was also extended.
That same change was extended
to the Attic Encapsulation Measure.
And I'll skip forward briefly and just say, also,
it will be extended to the Cool Roofs Measure.
(indistinct talking in background)
The cool, we don't always associate the Cool Roof Measure
with the installation measures,
but it does have that same dynamic
where the savings vary based on starting R-value.
And so that change is in progress right now.
That's why I have it listed as pending,
but that will be a part of the,
the volumes that are distributed after EEIP.
Cyrus: Can you say, I'm sorry, can you say one more time?
So you're putting back the potential of starting at an R1,
is that what you're doing?
Derek: So what we found is that when these sections
were removed from the TRM,
a lot of times contractors were avoiding those,
those homes entirely in part,
because the savings were no longer.
Cyrus: They weren't getting credit, so they weren't-
-: Yeah, so they weren't gonna do it.
And we did not go back
and put the savings that were there before,
because Tetra Tech's findings,
that's part of their consumption analysis for those savings
were not consistent with what they were seeing in the field.
But, because that lowest range from last year's TRM
was based on an R6.5,
We were able to create a new lower tier
that was higher than what the tiers
that we had removed previously,
but still offered an incremental improvement
so that utilities can,
the incentive rates are at the discretion of the utilities,
but it may allow them to offer a slightly higher incentive
for those lower categories and try to help,
help get those homes that need the insulation the most
so the, by participants in the program.
-: Yeah, that seems like a good change.
-: Yeah.
(chuckles)
Hopefully it has that effect.
And then I think this is the only new measure
on the residential side, but we added a,
a measure for Low-E storm windows.
These are not window replacements,
they're added as attachments to existing windows,
but that's a new measure that will be available
for next year.
Domestic hot water.
So, I'll call this out for heat pump water heaters,
but it really applies to any measure in the TRM.
If there,
if a measure does not have an early retirement baseline,
it does not mean that you're not eligible to apply
the deemed savings methodologies
when you're replacing equipment that has not yet failed.
So we just clarified here
that when an early retirement baseline does exist,
you're allowed to use the replace on burnout savings.
And that definitely applies
specifically to heat pump water heaters,
but also any other measure
that may not have an early retirement baseline.
And then also pretty straightforward
for these two showerhead temperature sensitive replacement,
restrictor valves.
That's what TSRV, I think stands for.
We, the utilities were not implementing this measure
to claim gas savings.
We don't include gas savings in the TRM,
but there was just an oversight
in terms of the language here.
So we went back and restricted this measure
to only homes, or yeah,
only to homes with electric hot water.
All right. Appliances updates were pretty minor.
Updated the Clothes Washer Measure
to align with the current Energy Star calculator.
We are always, we have several measures that are labeled
as Energy Star measures.
So we're always monitoring the Energy Star specifications
and the calculators,
usually when it makes it a little difficult,
because usually when a specification is updated,
the calculator updates follow a year or so later.
So I'm always monitoring those.
And there was a change made for clothes washers this year.
A couple more unit corrections on pool pumps
and refrigerator recycling.
And then for advanced power strips,
as part of last year's comprehensive update,
one of the things we were trying to do
is make sure that all of the measures in the TRM
were consistent with the current peak definition,
and this was one of the stragglers.
And so we went ahead and updated some of those values
that had a minor effect on the winter demand
for advanced power strips.
All right. That's it for residential.
Transitioning into the commercial volume lighting
is a measure that receives a high focus every year,
delivers a lot of savings to the utility programs.
The Standard Wattage Table that I mentioned before
underwent, this is a listing of fixture codes
that relate to a certain type of fixture
that that may be a baseline fixture,
something that's being taken out or an efficiency measure,
something that typically an LED that's being installed.
And so we associate different configurations with deemed
or assumed wattage.
And so I mentioned that a lot of the utilities
utilize the same calculator, but for those that don't,
and really just for any anyone who wants to quickly access
and understand what wattage's may be associated
with these different fixture types.
We made this table available
on the Texas Efficiency website.
And the DLC, for commercial a lot of the products
are there, energy performance is verified by a group
called VLC Design Lights Consortium,
and they're in the process of updating their QPL,
their Qualified Product Listing.
And so we just add guidance about several unique scenarios
that may be affected by these frequent changes to these,
these types of QPLs.
One may be the products are listed at one point in time
when a project may be starting,
and whenever they're going through the design
of that project, only to be D-listed later.
So guidance about how to handle that.
Model numbers that might have slight variances
that don't affect the performance of the fixture,
and also fixtures that may be tested and qualified
for one lane,
but may also be available in other incremented the length.
So just providing guidance for those scenarios.
And one thing that we did not address in the TRM,
but I will touch on it cause it fits this category.
Tetra Tech released a guidance memo recently
because the DLCQPL in particular
is in the process of being updated.
They have a scenario right now where there's differences
between parent and child products.
So the parent products have tested,
both reported and tested wattage's listed currently,
but the child products only have the reported values.
So in the meantime,
if we have any contractors on the phone that aren't,
aren't certain about this,
you can use the reported values
until the DLC finishes updating their QPL.
These last things were just adding citations
and making some clarifications on the table.
Man: Excuse me, Derek?
Derek: Yes.
Man: The guidance on the model number variations
for lighting, I could see that being useful
for other similar sort of scenarios,
is the guidance there sort of applicable
to other measures that have variances in the model numbers
where, you know, nine tenths of the model numbers the same,
but there's some suffix that's a G instead of an H.
-: Probably, yes.
But it would be difficult to say for sure,
unless we knew the specific scenario.
I would, I would think that
the decision would be the same
if presented with that type of scenario,
this is just the one that we see more often,
because it's the measure that receives the highest focus.
But, I would just say reach out to EUMMAT or Tetra Tech
and just find out for sure if that's, if that's the case,
we'll get something in writing.
And also, just whenever there's things like this
that come up, especially among implementation,
it's something that's somewhat separate from the TRM
and we don't always understand how these measures
are gonna be applied in the field.
So get that feedback is very valuable to us
and we can flag those things and get them clarified.
So you don't even have to worry about asking.
It's written in the TRM and you can can point to it
at the end of the day, so.
-: Perfect. Thanks.
Derek: All right.
So the last thing with commercial lighting,
I mentioned that there's some interactive effects
between residential and commercial for midstream,
especially for the lower wattage lamps,
lamps with an equivalent wattage less than a hundred Watts
that are more often seen in residential applications,
but may sometimes get installed in commercial facilities.
So we, but in general,
the update to the commercial measure's the same
as for the residential, we went,
we attempted to make some streamlined,
some changes to streamlined implementation
in last year's update
that ended up being reverted back to TRM 7.0
as part of last year's Tetra Tech guidance memo,
but, there are some changes in this year's update.
One, is we had a specific baseline
previously specified for reflector and directional lamps.
That's being replaced by guidance
just to refer to the whatever qualified product listing
you use for product, refer to that equivalent wattage.
And that, it just kind of eliminates a few steps
that were involved in the older process.
We also consolidated a few categories of lamp type
to just have fewer options to make it a little bit easier
to map those to the right savings.
And there was an operating hours update to outdoor lighting
that had happened in the main table for the deemed savings
that had not been extended to the midstream values yet.
So that change was made there.
For lighting controls,
we just added language to make it clear
that the control savings were not applicable
in to new construction scenarios where occupancy sensors
are already required by code,
but that you could claim savings for the incremental savings
between occupancy sensors and perhaps another control type
that has a deemed savings factor.
That's exceeds that of an occupancy sensor.
So again, in many cases control savings
won't be applicable in new construction,
unless you have a control type
that has been deemed to achieve savings,
exceeding that of an occupancy sensor.
So, on HVAC, we had already made a change.
I don't know if it was last year,
but it was in one of the recent updates for heat pumps.
There, the baseline tables in these measures,
especially with the addition of early retirement can,
can be pretty large and it makes it more difficult
to determine exactly what baseline efficiency you should use
in the deemed savings calculation.
So for heat pumps,
we tried to eliminate one of those factors,
which was the heating section type.
And we are assuming an electric resistance heating section
type for all of those systems.
And we did something similar for ACs this year
to assume the all other heating section type,
just eliminate one data point
that that might be a little bit more difficult to validate
if you're not getting that information in the field.
And then somewhere related to lighting,
we incorporated some midstream guidance.
Again, we expect midstream to be more of a focus
for utilities moving forward.
So trying to add that to various measures.
Phil: And again, midstream means you give a retailer.
Derek: Or a distributor that the rebate will go-
Phil: The rebate goes to them.
Derek: And it encourages them
to sell higher efficiency equipment.
Phil: Okay.
Derek: And chillers and PTACS
follow very closely along with the split end package,
AC and Heat Pump Measure.
So very similar changes were made there as well.
I think the one I skipped over here is that we,
you're not always, when you're,
when you're dealing with an early retirement project,
you're not always able to determine the age of the system
in the field.
Maybe a name plate is illegible or something like that,
but we just provide a guidance that in those cases,
you can assume that the age of the equipment
is equal to the measure life
for whichever these measures that you might be looking at.
And that's consistent with some changes
that have had already been incorporated into volume two
for some of the residential measures.
All right.
This computer room AC measure or crack units,
and also I'll skip down
to the small commercial evaporative cooling.
We found that there are variations
in terms of how the equipment is rated
specifically for the crack units.
The capacity might, is we're finding more where the systems,
system capacity is rated in KW, but the,
the deemed savings methodology was set up for a capacity
in a different unit.
So added some conversion factors there
just to make it clear how to determine those savings.
And for small commercial evaporative cooling
something similar,
whether you're looking at tons or BTU hours.
And then on the efficiency side,
whether you're talking about KW per ton or IEER, EER,
just making sure that it's clear how to convert
between units, depending on which system type you're using.
HVAC VFDs.
What we did here is we kind of reviewed
and corrected the operating schedules
for all the building types,
but then also expanded the list of available offerings,
building type offerings
to be more consistent with the commercial HVAC measures.
Also, just to make it easier for contractors
who may be participating in both measures to,
to be able to determine the building type,
as I don't want to speak for Tetra Tech.
But I think a lot of times that leads to differences
in between reported and evaluated savings
is just not getting that building type correct.
And I didn't mention it on the slide, it's not a change.
But we do try to provide tables now
that give better descriptions
of what these building types are.
Might give an idea for square footage associated
with certain type of building type,
rather than just calling it small or large,
and then also providing some examples,
so you know what might fall into a certain category.
So that exists in the TRM
and is also incorporated into a lot of the calculators
that the utilities will use.
Did we cover, oh, and the last thing here
is there's a new measure
for small commercial evaporative cooling.
This is something that really only applies to our West
and Northern climate zones, but it is a new,
new measure that's available
to help prevent the installation of refrigerated cooling
in those climate zones.
Yes.
-: Where that begins,
as you move west where that account kicks in.
-: So it's only specified for climate zone one and five.
So for climate zone five, that's the west,
that's just El Paso and I think it's El Paso County
and then maybe one or two other counties
bordering on the east side of that county.
-: Okay. And then it will go in the middle of zone one,
or does it?
-: Yeah, so I think that's on zone one,
so it would apply there.
We don't see it as often but if it,
so utility in that area
may not be focusing on that as much,
but certainly if you come across it,
something that they might be interested in hearing about,
and it will be available in the TRA.
Gary: Thank you.
Derek: So window treatments, the,
last year's update, we kind of,
for this measure of the update was happening in stages,
we're moving away from a factor
that's kind of being retired,
the shading coefficient factor,
moving to solar heat gain coefficient.
In last year's update, we had a conversion from,
from SC to SHGC, and this year is up there.
We've removed that conversion
and we've just moved to a direct citation
for the SHGC values.
The majority of the work in the commercial volume
happened on the food service and refrigeration measures.
So it's kind of funny that on this and the next slide,
I boil it down into just a couple of bullets for,
for these sections that had 10 plus measures on them.
But the changes were all pretty consistent
across all of them for food service.
Most of these updates were related to following updates
that that happened in the Energy Star calculator
in March of this year.
And then there was also an amendment that happened
in that calculator in July.
So, like I said, we're always continuously monitoring,
even if we have to make a change
in the middle of the TRM update schedule,
but we did make comprehensive updates
to pretty much all the food service measures
to align with these calculator updates
and then updated the terminology for consistency
across the measures.
And in part that's to help encourage the installation
of multiple measures,
something that we're always interested in seeing,
multiple measures at the same site.
And also this is,
these measures lend themselves well
to midstream type delivery.
And that way, if you have a distributor
that's now dealing with multiple system types,
making sure that the measures are easily understood
moving from one to the next.
So making sure that that terminology aligns
across all those food service measures.
Where I guess a couple of individual updates
that I called out here on ovens,
making a change to match the Energy Star specs,
specification combination ovens.
And then on pre-rinse spray valves,
this is another example of a measure
that did not necessarily get the same attention
in last year's comprehensive update as the rest of the TRM.
So, you'll see this on a couple other measures here,
moving forward.
Some of these that were left off
mostly because we ran out of time last year,
were finished in this year's update.
So just a general review of all the savings algorithms,
especially if it's a measure that was older,
that that may have studies that are no longer accessible,
replacing some of those input assumptions
to make sure that everything is clearly defined
and transparent as far as how the savings are derived.
And then also updating peak demand coefficients
to comply with the current peak definition.
So this, that's also true of all the refrigeration measures.
These are measures that I think have been around
since one of the earlier volumes of the TRM
hadn't been touched since then.
And so, we were not able to find all of the studies
that were used to derive the savings initially,
that's part of why these measures
were pushed to this year's update.
So we completed that analysis in the interim
and made those changes in this year's TRM update.
And they're all very similar to each other.
They rely on a lot of the same coefficients.
There was one exception, the first strip curtains.
This was a measure that relied on an M&V study.
And now that those savings have been replaced
by a similar methodology that's used
in all these other refrigeration measures.
And I guess more of a minor update
to clarify the units for zero-energy doors
specifying that those savings should be per door
instead of per linear foot.
Easy change in the TRM, but could make a,
it's an important change to help prevent overstating
of those savings.
Hot water, this is a new section to the TRM,
but it does not actually include any new measures.
These are all measures that existed in the next section,
the miscellaneous section,
but we kind of just called these out
as we're starting to see more hot water measures
in the commercial volume,
just wanted to put those in a section
where it's easier to find them.
The one change for the TSRV
that I touched on on the residential side,
the same change was made from commercial
to restrict those to,
I have homes here because I copied the bullets
from the residential slide,
but restricting this to buildings.
In most cases,
I think this is targeting lodging applications.
So restricting this to hotels and things of that nature
that had only electric water heating.
Cyrus: I'm sorry, DHW? Sorry.
-: Domestic hot water.
Yeah.
Sorry, I get used to all these acronyms
and try to define some of them, but I forgot others.
This is the last section in volume three,
pretty minor updates to these measures listed on the screen.
I'll skip past the first two, but PC power management.
This was, again, an example of updating the,
the peak demand coefficients
for compliance with the current definition.
I think at this point, y'all, won't have to hear me
continue to say that year after year.
I think we have all of them done except for one,
and that's a measure that's not implemented as frequently
and relies on some modeling.
So that's something we'll turn our attention to next year.
And then, the electric vehicle supply equipment,
electric chargers, EV chargers.
This measure was, when it was added to the commercial volume
was based on the residential version.
So it had some documentation requirements
that didn't really make sense for the commercial measure.
We got rid of those this year.
And those are mostly related to collecting things
like vehicle type or the number of miles driven per day.
Something that's pretty much impossible for a commercial
or a multi-family application.
And then lastly, we have four new measures in this section,
mostly targeting manufacturing or industrial applications,
but we have VFDs for water pumping,
very similar to the HVAC VFD measure,
but for water pumping applications.
We have a steam trap repair and replacement,
which is pretty self-explanatory.
And then we have two measures, hydraulic gear lubricants
and hydraulic oils.
These are measures that just target efficiency improvements
through eliminating or minimize,
not eliminating but minimizing friction,
in some of these more industrial applications.
And then lastly volume four, the M&V protocols volume.
Have just a few kind of high-level things to point out here,
we increase the EUL
for ground source heat pumps from 15 to 20
to align with the ground source heat pump measure
that's already available in volume two.
We added a few sections to the reference home
in residential new construction relating to Commissioning
and dehumidification.
Res and non-res solar PV updated modeling instructions.
As we get more used to this transition
where previously we had deemed savings,
and now we've transitioned to using this software PV Watts
that allows us to get more accurate savings
for specific sites.
And so just continuing to improve that measure
to make sure people have a good understanding
about how to utilize that software.
We had a few measures where there was no UL specified.
So we went ahead and filled in that gap.
Solar shingles is an example of that.
So we established a 20 year UL.
Solar attic fans is a measure
that's been on a bit of a roller coaster ride
over the last few years.
It was originally added in TRM 7.0
with the expectation that there would be additional M&V done
to validate those savings and refine them moving forward.
That didn't happen.
And so as a result of that, it was removed from TRM 8.0,
but we've recognized that that's in part
probably due to the fact that some of those projects
weren't able to occur last year due to the environment
that we find ourselves in right now.
And so we've added it back this time to the M&V section
with a few additional M&V requirements.
But that measure may eventually transition back
to volume two
once we get the data that we need
to kind of increase the competence in those deemed savings.
So I mentioned the pandemic
and there was some qualitative guidance added
to both the behavioral and commercial Commissioning measures
to account for some unique scenarios
that may be related to the pandemic
or other similar scenarios.
And then for residential and commercial load management,
Lark already mentioned the exclusion
of critical load customers.
So I won't get into that again,
but the main other change to these measures
was to kind of remove utility specific details
and instead point to their individual program manuals.
So you can get all that information for the specific utility
that you're used to working with.
And yep, I think that's it.
So, if you have any questions
I'm happy to take them now.
Also, and also for those folks on the phone,
if there's ever anything that you have
that you'd like to discuss,
whether it's wanting to get a better understanding
of how the savings are derived, how to use them,
or if you have ideas for how to improve the TRM,
my contact information is on the screen now.
So, please feel free to reach out to me
or reach out to Tetra Tech
and we maintain what we call a TRM tracker.
That's I think publicly available. Is it publicly available?
-: Well, it's on, it's not right now.
Yeah, it's on SharePoint.
-: So we can, if you get that information to us,
we'll make sure it's added to the TRM tracker
so that it gets addressed in a, in an upcoming TRM update.
Any questions?
Okay. That's the way I like it.
(laughing)
-: Thank you.
-: It was really nice.
We're gonna wrap up at noon instead of 1230.
I thought, boy, people are gonna start getting hungry.
It's before 12:30, so that worked out great.
Thank you all for coming.
It is just lovely to actually see some faces
of people again, and thank you for all on the phone as well.
So Therese, let me know if I've missed anything,
but I think our next step here is an EEIP distribution email
that will have the red line TRM that is ready,
and that staff will be working on filing this week
on Interchange. So you will have that link to review.
Everything is red lined,
so you can easily identify the updates.
There is an update memo that goes with it.
So you can see the summary of all the updates
and then go straight to the red lines.
In our presentations were also,
we always file those in the project as well.
So that will be coming out this week.
We do a two week comment period.
If for any reason you need more time,
just reach out and we can try and accommodate that.
But you know,
we're looking to finalize by the end of the year
and get a final.
So we don't have a lot of wiggle room.
On the low income forms that we talked about
and TEPRI did all of those, you know, again,
lots of work has been done.
Those forms are in utility hands
and we do anticipate distributing those
for EEIP review in November.
They can't actually be finalized till January,
cause that's when the federal poverty level information
is updated.
So the final that will be filed will not be until 2022,
but the forms will be distributed for review before that.
Any other?
-: I think that's it, Laura.
You covered it all. Thank you very much.
-: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Yeah. Oh no, Cyrus, I would be so disappointed.
-: You mentioned earlier that you guys publish
a sort of a five page executive summary.
Does that get this? Where does that get filed in?
That we can see it.
-: Yeah, so we send out the, it gets filed in the project.
So we will just be adding that now that we didn't get,
you know, we kind of vet things
since we didn't get any significant comments,
we will file that.
So we'll just include that on the same distribution
that's going out this week.
Cyrus: Thanks.
-: Yeah. Yeah.
And then that's also always available.
If you don't want to go,
everything is on the Commission website and file,
but they also, Frontier also gets everything up
on Texasefficiency.com as well.
So I have, I send that after EEIP, but if you're like,
oh, do I have to go, it's on the-
-: And where do, what's the project number?
Is there one project number that all this gets filed in?
Therese: Yeah, it's 38578.
-: I'm just getting that on record.
(laughing)
Thanks.
-: And I'm so glad, I never say it right.
So Therese has it.
(laughs)
Great. Anything else for today?
I'm so glad to see you.
All right.
All right. Thank you.
Anything from the phone before we say goodbye?
Woman On Phone: Thank you.
-: Thank you.
Woman On Phone: Thanks, bye.
-: Bye bye.
All right.