In 2011, media outlets such as the New Yorker started touting news around the “Rebound Effect” of residential energy efficiency. According to the US think tank, Breakthrough Institute (BTI), a rebound effect causes consumers who choose energy efficient products to consume more energy through new purchases. If accurate, this effect would call into question the efficacy of energy efficiency as a strategy.

Climate Progress evaluated the data used to support BTI’s argument along with other consumption data sets and found that BTI’s data doesn’t hold up under the magnifying glass. They published an article refuting the “rebound effect” in energy efficiency in January.

The truth may be somewhere in between. The data the Climate Progress shows for the energy per capita usage in California vs. the rest of the country seems to clearly indicate that energy efficiency works over the long term. On the other hand, our customers have seen anecdotal cases where a homeowner, upon completing an energy retrofit sees their energy bills drop substantially, decides to put that savings into the purchase of a new hot tub.

That uncertainty, on a home by home basis, and more broadly across utility energy efficiency programs, is why measurement and evaluation is important. But it’s not easy. The savings from efficiency measures implemented in homes are often measured through different methods.  The common approaches include a deemed savings calculation (from regional technical forums or approved technical manuals), modeled savings (from approved and calibrated home energy modeling tools) and actual post-implementation utility billing data (often compared to a control group). Measures may be saving more or less than expected or modeled in each home, depending on the characteristics of the home and behavior of the occupants after a retrofit.

If your utility program is wrestling with these post-implementation savings calculations and monitoring, share your thoughts. Is there a “rebound effect” in your home energy efficiency programs?

Open data standards will promote rapid innovation, industry growth and energy savings

EnergySavvy is excited to be among the companies announcing support for the Green Button initiative today. We think Green Button, as a common language for energy usage information, has the potential to foster new innovation and growth for energy efficiency companies.

The Challenge of Scale in Energy Efficiency

We’ve grown a lot lately at EnergySavvy, tripling the size of our team in the past year to keep up with demand from new and existing customers. Keeping this momentum while continuing to offer consumers great experiences will increasingly require open standards that facilitate growth and innovation.

We’ve promoted the need to adopt standard formats for energy efficiency data for years (see “Five Different Languages in One Industry”). Without open standards, utilities are forced into expensive approaches and custom systems, and consumers have little or no choice when it comes to understanding their energy usage and ways to save energy and money. Open standards have been critical to multiple waves of private sector innovation on the internet, and we believe that they have the potential to spur waves of innovation in energy efficiency. That’s why we’re very excited by the Green Button initiative, the momentum it’s gaining, and the work to help lead this effort provided by the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy.

What is the Green Button Initiative?

Green Button is an industry-developed, open, voluntary standard for presenting energy usage information. It creates a common language for utilities to use when describing their customers’ energy usage. These utilities will be able to work with any tools that support Green Button to provide the best experience for their customers. Customers of utilities that adopt Green Button will be able to download their data with one click and find a wide variety of tools to get the most of their data and understand their energy usage better (which helps them save money and energy).

EnergySavvy and Green Button

EnergySavvy is already working on support for the Green Button standard. With Green Button, we can make it easier for consumers to understand their energy usage and save money on their utility bills. A single, nationwide open standard for energy usage information means the innovations EnergySavvy creates for one Green Button utility can immediately be translated to any other Green Button utility coast to coast. It will allow us to deliver new features at a lower cost and with greater flexibility for our customers. All of that means more innovation and more growth for us as a company.

“Green Button has the potential to become an open standard that unleashes private sector innovation and growth–not unlike the role of open standards and the internet. We’re excited about this effort–it will help accelerate our ability to serve customers nationwide and further invest in our rapidly growing team.”

– Aaron Goldfeder, CEO, EnergySavvy

Green Button as a Model for Innovation

By bringing together the experts in both the private and public sectors to form the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (under NIST’s leadership), the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy is playing a key role in the creation of this industry-developed open standard. And by helping to promote and drive voluntary adoption of a single open format for energy usage data among utilities, the OSTP has seeded the usage of the Green Button standard in the industry.

EnergySavvy believes that the Green Button Initiative is a great model for innovation. An open standard for energy usage information–facilitated by government but created by the industry–will lead to great outcomes for each of the different stakeholders in the energy industry, especially consumers. Offering positive outcomes for all stakeholders while being open and flexible means that the Green Button initiative can help drive the next wave of private market innovation and growth in energy efficiency.

New clients, an ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year award winning program and Matt Golden, a home performance industry leader, joins our Advisory Board. 

Welcome to Our New Clients

This March marked the launch of EnergySavvy software deployments with two investor-owned utilities, Puget Sound Energy and Black Hills Energy. Additionally, EnergySavvy was awarded the Online Energy Analysis Tool Request for Proposal (RFP) for Long Island Power Authority.

Puget Sound Energy’s HomePrint in-home analysts are now using EnergySavvy software to provide homeowners with easy-to-understand home energy analytics while highlighting appropriate energy efficiency rebate programs. With data collection on mobile devices such as iPads and iPhones, HomePrint specialists are able to present their analysis and recommendations instantly in an engaging interface designed to maximize conversion from audit to retrofit activities.

Black Hills Energy launched EnergySavvy’s Online Audit for Colorado Gas customers to assess their homes’ energy savings potential by answering fewer than 30 energy efficiency related questions. This tool will not only educate Black Hills Energy customers, but also the results will guide homeowners to applicable energy efficiency programs available in their service territory.

Long Island Power Authority chose EnergySavvy as the winner of a competitive RFP for a provider of an online energy analysis tool–stay tuned for the official launch!

Utah Home Performance with ENERGY STAR Receives ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year Award

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy have awarded an ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year to the Utah Home Performance with ENERGY STAR program.

In conjunction with the program implementer (PECI), EnergySavvy’s Online Audit and Program Optix played an important role in making the program a great success. Read our Utah Home Performance Case Study to learn more about EnergySavvy’s impact on the program.

Matt Golden Joins EnergySavvy’s Advisory Board

EnergySavvy welcomes Matt Golden, Founder of Recurve Inc and a leader in the home performance industry, to our Advisory Board. Matt brings expertise as an entrepreneur and policy advocate. Matt was instrumental in forming Efficiency First and serves on a number of national and state boards, including the Building Performance Institute (BPI), California Building Performance Contractors Association (CBPCA) and the Affordable Comfort Institute (ACI).

We’re just getting started this year. Stop by and see us at ACI National Leadership Summit and Core Conference in Baltimore in two weeks, and stay tuned for more excitement as 2012 continues. 

EnergySavvy and PECI have just published new statistics from the Utah Home Performance with ENERGY STAR (HPwES) program results. The program completed more than 6,000 online audits, 1,850 in-home assessments and 1,000 whole-home retrofits in a year and a half.

Both EnergySavvy’s Online Audit and Program Optix were deployed in the Utah HPwES program, which is administered by PECI. Program participants were guided through Online Audit as a friendly and effective initial engagement, and were then tracked from start to finish through the Utah HPwES program using Program Optix, a software system designed to manage energy efficiency programs.

The results got even better with Program Optix: a dramatically improved in-home analysis to retrofit conversion rate of 70%!

Read the complete case study on EnergySavvy software in the Utah Home Performance program.

And check out the overall program update from PECI.

For the second article in EnergySavvy’s series of interviews with energy efficiency program managers, we turned to Craig Clark, Connecticut Light and Power’s Program Administrator for Residential Programs.

Clark’s residential energy efficiency program, the Home Energy Solutions (HES) program, is designed to make $750 worth of energy efficiency retrofits the day of the in-home analysis. The cost to the homeowner is $75, which Clark believes is enough of a hook to keep the homeowner interested but not too much to scare them away.

For HES participants that are interested in “swinging for the green fences” and completing a whole-home retrofit, Clark says Northeast Utilities offers a Home Performance with ENERGY STAR program. In addition to the initial $750 worth of retrofits, which includes air sealing, duct sealing, lighting upgrades and more, Northeast Utilities will pay 50 percent of the cost of the home retrofit or 50 percent of the deemed savings (whichever is less).

Many utilities include direct install measures at the time of the in-home audit — to book savings associated with the audit — but Clark’s HES program, and a few others around the country, go a step further to combine the in-home audit and a light retrofit into a single visit. How does it work and why?

Here’s what Clark had to say:

Q: How many homes is the program hoping to retrofit?

About 14,000 to 15,000 homes in 2011. The vendors average 1,300 assessments a month with as many as 3,000 per month during the busiest periods of the program.

A lot of people think, “Why the heck are you saving people what you sell them? What’s going on here?” That sounds counter productive, but we explain that buying energy efficiency is more cost effective than buying energy. Investing in energy efficiency has a much better payback then buying energy. If we can show that down the road we’re not going to have to build more power plants and substations, that’s going to save us a lot of money. A homeowners’ average savings after working with the HES program is $200 per year, which shows that energy efficiency is a resource.

Q: How is the Home Energy Solutions in-home survey structured?

We have two vendors go to a home to do a complete survey of the home, and hopefully the customers walk around with them during the assessment. The vendors are there for half a day, and they make as many upgrades as they can on the spot.

There are obviously major upgrades like insulation, HVAC, windows and other improvements homeowners can make later, and we have rebates for all those things as well.

After the assessment, the vendors sit down with the customer to tell them, “Here’s how leaky your house is, here’s what we’d like to do: for example, install CFL’s, do some air and duct sealing, put in some water saving measures,” and then they have the homeowner sign off on the work plan so HES vendors can make the improvements while they’re in the home. That was the main reason for the path we chose rather than strictly a whole-home audit program. If you don’t get in there and do the possible upgrades on that first visit, you’re going to miss out on some people completely.

After installing the on-spot measures, the vendors follow up with the homeowners. They provide estimates for further upgrade costs, savings and paybacks. They also provide the rebates for the measures that are recommended.

Q: What tools do you use to educate homeowners?

During the “kitchen table wrap-up”, we present homeowners with a toolbox to educate them on all of the resources that are out there. This includes all of the info on what is done to their house, tax credits and financing information, how to dispose of CFLs and other education pieces.

Q: How do you measure program success?

First of all, if I make my goal to be cost effective. We want to complete as many measures as we can without going over budget. We get paid via the Connecticut Energy Efficiency Fund at the end of the year based on if we spent our budget, but didn’t overspend, and came in at a certain measure of cost-effectiveness.

The other thing I think really kind of speaks for itself is that 80 percent of the surveys we receive back from homeowners say they heard about the program from a family member or a friend.

About 30 percent of homeowners who participate in the program respond to the surveys. So if most people are participating in the program because it was recommended by a family member or a friend, that says most homeowners had a good experience. Word of mouth sells a job more than any marketing can do.

Q: When did this program start? When is it expected to end?

The program started in 2006, and eventually we want to have it completely market based, but I think it will take five years to get there. We’re on such a roll and achieving so much energy efficiency, but I think we still need to have some ratepayer based funding for now.

We’re always tweaking the program, and the goal has always been to make it a true market-based program so customers understand that energy efficiency is worth something and make it something homeowners are willing to pay for. Everybody tunes up their car to make sure they’re getting the best mileage. What about your house? We need to change that mentality to make sure energy efficiency is in the homeowners’ budgets–to make sure a house is running as efficiently as possible.

We’re also working toward building up the trade itself. Six years ago, there were only two or three contractors who did home energy efficiency. We now have 25 vendors with 124 technicians amongst them.

Q: What advice would you give to other program managers with similar programs?

Try not to have dips and valleys in your funding. Sometimes I think we shouldn’t have accepted stimulus funding because it caused us to expand too quickly, now we have to back off and that hurts the industry. It’s good to have paced and gradual growth.

Also, have a good relationship with the vendors. Don’t just let them run out there. I communicate with our vendors everyday. They’re the only ones who can tell you what’s happening on the ground.

Q: What keeps you up at night?

How are other programs getting homeowners to take out $7,000 to $10,000 in financing to pay for deep retrofits? How do you get homeowners to do the deep level of retrofits? We only have 8 to 10 percent of homeowners doing more than what they get at the standard HES level.

I go to all of the meetings like NEEP, ACI, and CEE everyone is talking about deep energy retrofits, we do all we can to get homeowners to act on the further measures but the uptake is very low. What percentage of homeowners in other programs are doing these deep retrofits?

Craig Clark earned a B.S. in Environmental Sciences from San Jose State University. Clark has worked in the residential energy efficiency business since 1989. Currently the CL&P Program Administrator for various residential energy efficiency efforts that are funded by the CT Energy Efficiency Fund, CT gas companies and Federal Stimulus grants including the development and management of the comprehensive, building science based Home Energy Solutions program that services 2,000 homes per month and employs over 200 green helmet workers. Clark is an active member of the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partners, the Consortium for Energy Efficiency and the Affordable Comfort Institute as a member of the Northeast Conference Planning Committee. He is also active in the CT Energy Workforce Development Consortium and member of the Green Work Force subgroup.

This article is the second of a series of industry best practice articles. If you’ve got a good idea for a program or story for us to cover, let us know.

Correction: The Home Energy Solutions program is supported by the Connecticut Energy Efficiency Fund.

EnergySavvy welcomes its two newest customers: the City of San Francisco and the Local Energy Alliance Program (LEAP) serving Charlottesville, VA.

The City of San Francisco has recently deployed EnergySavvy’s Online Audit to help drive results in its Home Improvement & Performance program.

“EnergySavvy’s ability to combine their building science expertise with an intuitive and fun customer interface is unmatched anywhere in the market,” said Reuben Schwartz, the City of San Francisco’s Residential Energy Efficiency Manager. “We are getting terrific feedback from both our expert energy contractors as well as homeowners just learning about energy efficiency.”

Learn more about EnergySavvy Online Audit for your program on our website.

LEAP joins three other energy efficiency programs, Clean Energy Works Oregon, Community Power Works (Seattle) and Utah Home Performance with ENERGY STAR, that already operate with EnergySavvy Program Optix.

“LEAP chose EnergySavvy’s Optix because it was designed to facilitate cost effective program implementation through keeping all partners and players on task in a user friendly and meaningful way,” said LEAP Executive Director Cynthia Adams. “We need software that is flexible enough to grow with us, but well-tested and quickly deployable. We look forward to working with both Optix and the people who created it.”

Through modern customer engagement, enhanced transparency and software automation, Program Optix works to maximize program conversion rates, boost energy savings and overall impact while optimizing administrative costs.

EnergySavvy’s software solutions, Program Optix and Online Audit, in conjunction with the program management services offered by its partners, represent a new standard in maximizing the impact of rate and tax payer funds for an industry accustomed to running programs with custom-built Excel spreadsheets, Access databases and Salesforce implementations.

“Utilities running energy efficiency programs are demanding more savings per program dollar and have higher expectations for how those savings are delivered and measured,” said Aaron Goldfeder, CEO of EnergySavvy. “Program Optix will be table stakes for residential efficiency programs coordinating program delivery and measuring performance in real-time.”

We’ve seen a lot of dull energy efficiency ads, but we fell in love with these humorous and memorable spots from CPS Energy, one of our clients. Check out these great commercials promoting CPS Energy’s whole-home energy efficiency programs.

CPS Energy has made three funny, informative and useful commercials to advertise its rebate program for homeowners in the San Antonio area–not an easy feat considering the subject.

They used everyday people…

And talking dogs…

And a call to action to drive people to their website…

If you’re interested in learning more about the CPS Energy Savers program and how program administrators have incorporated technology, including EnergySavvy’s Online Audit, to enhance their programs, be sure to attend the APPA Customer Connections Conference, November 6-9 in Savannah, GA.

CPS Energy’s Carla De La Chapa and EnergySavvy’s Tom DuBos will present “Helping Customers Any Time, Anywhere: Web Portals and Web Presentment,” at 4:15 pm on Monday, Nov. 7.

If you’ve seen (or produced) great energy efficiency video spots, we’d love to see them. Share links below in the comments.

Today, EnergySavvy takes the wraps off Program Optix, our newest software application for utilities running energy efficiency programs.

Program Optix is a software-as-a-service product for residential energy efficiency programs. It tracks customers from intake through completion. The software actively works to maximize program conversion rates while minimizing operational costs through software automation. For the past 6 months, we’ve been operating and fine-tuning Program Optix with three of our customers, Clean Energy Works Oregon, Community Power Works (Seattle) and Utah Home Performance with ENERGY STAR.

“Clean Energy Works Oregon is a unique program with sophisticated and evolving needs. EnergySavvy has been a great partner for us, continually delivering innovation while supporting our changing requirements. EnergySavvy Program Optix gave us the ability for the first time to track projects in real-time, optimize our program workflow and run our program more effectively,” said Derek Smith, CEO of Clean Energy Works Oregon.

We think Program Optix is a big deal for the residential energy efficiency industry because it represents a clear step towards program transparency and performance, delivered and measured by software. Coupled with our Online Audit and in conjunction with the program management services offered by our partners, Program Optix represents a new standard for an industry accustomed to running programs with custom-built Excel spreadsheets, Access databases and Salesforce implementations.

“Utilities running energy efficiency programs are demanding more savings per program dollar and have higher expectations for how those savings are delivered and measured,” said Aaron Goldfeder, CEO of EnergySavvy, “Program Optix will be table stakes for residential efficiency programs: coordinating program delivery and measuring performance in real-time.”

Learn more about Program Optix on our newly redesigned website, EnergySavvy.com.

Two upcoming Webinars featuring EnergySavvy team members and partners should be on your radar.

MEEA Technical Webinar Series Presents:
Engaging Homeowners in Energy Efficiency

Presenters: Scott Case, EnergySavvy and Brian Detman, Clean Energy Works Oregon

When: September 8, 2011 at 1:30 CDT
Register here: http://bit.ly/pAlsQV

When it comes to engaging homeowners in energy efficiency, one of the keys to success is making energy efficiency emotional. Through learnings from A/B testing with the Department of Energy and other Market research, EnergySavvy’s Scott Case will educate Webinar attendees on how social psychology triggers can nudge homeowners toward the deeper whole-home retrofit rather than the stopping at the rebated single measure.

Interested in how other programs are implementing these strategies? Brian Detman will share top marketing tips from the Clean Energy Works Oregon (CEWO) program. CEWO is an industry leading, ARRA funded program that has leveraged behavioral psychology and online marketing to retrofit 127 homes in the first five months of the program. Learn what successful marketing strategies program administrators are leveraging and replicate those strategies in your own program.

EGIA Leadership Academy Presents:
Motivating Homeowners to Take Action

Presenters: Rob McGarty, EnergySavvy and Diane Ferington, Energy Trust of Oregon

When: September 8, 2011 at 11:00 a.m. PST
Register here: http://conta.cc/pH5O2n

Taking into consideration the viewpoints of utilities and governmental organizations, contractors (trade allies), and homeowners, EnergySavvy’s Rob McGarty and Energy Trust of Oregon’s Diane Ferington will share their strategies on getting homeowners to take action in home energy efficiency.

The strategies include tactics to increase conversation rates, integrating diverse marketing messages and avenues, and balancing retrofit demand with contractor capacity. Importantly, Webinar attendees will learn how to “sell” home retrofits by combining the quantitative benefits of energy and money savings with the qualitative benefits of home comfort, health and safety.

Why home energy efficiency is more cost effective and better for our economy than replacing our nation’s dying nuclear power plants.

Over the next 20 years, the power plants that produce one-third of the nuclear energy in the United States will reach the end of their operational lives. In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, other countries (Switzerland, Germany) are reconsidering their commitments to nuclear power. In the U.S., Michael Levi asks in this Slate article whether we can shift from nuclear to other fuel sources for our power generation.

But we’d like to present an alternative option to the discussion. If we use power more efficiently, particularly in our homes, we can avoid replacing these aging nuclear power plants entirely.

For half the cost of a new nuclear power plant, we can retrofit 1,600,000 homes for energy efficiency and save the same amount of energy. Retrofitting the houses would create 220,000 new jobs – that’s 90 times more jobs than you’d get from the replacement nuclear power plant.

Crunching the Numbers

To be clear, we at EnergySavvy are not anti-nuclear. We’re not pro-nuclear either. We’re just presenting the numbers in way that we hope can inform the national discussion.

• In this comparison, a new nuclear power plant is expected to last 40 years and produce at the U.S. average of 12.3 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year. The levelized cost of electricity for a new nuclear plant that we’re using is 8.4 cents per kWh, which includes the cost of financing, building and operating the plant for 40 years. The total cost for this plant and its power for 40 years is $41 billion.
• Instead, if you want to retrofit enough houses to eliminate the need for 12.3 billion kWh per year, the calculation works like this: A typical electrically heated U.S. home uses 20,000 kWh per year, which can be reduced by 30% with a $12,000 energy retrofit, based on various industry estimates. You’d need to retrofit just over 1.6 million homes to equal the entire annual energy production of a nuclear power plant, for a total cost of just under $20 billion. Home energy efficiency improvements in electrically heated homes include upgrading the efficiency of the electric heating system, insulating and making air sealing improvements to the home’s building envelope, using solar hot water heating systems and replacing inefficient A/C units and appliances.
• Job creation, in each case, looks like this: At peak construction, building a nuclear power plant would employ as many as 2,400 workers, eventually leveling out at around 400 to 700 long-term employees. For the home retrofits: According to Matt Golden, Policy Chair for Efficiency First, retrofitting 1,600,000 homes in a year would create roughly 220,000 jobs.

Caveats and Criticism

Of course, this kind of rough analysis uses many assumptions and can be subject to many criticisms. Let the discussion ensue:

• What about the cost of storing nuclear waste forever? While the operating cost of a nuclear power plant includes the storage of spent nuclear fuel during its 40-year operational life, the cost of safely storing that fuel for thousands of years afterwards is not included in this analysis. If it were even possible to estimate, the relative cost effectiveness of home retrofits would look much, much better.
• How do you really know what a new power plant will cost? We’re pretty solid on the home retrofit cost statistics, but the nuclear power plant cost calculations have a lot more uncertainty. Nuclear power plants typically take around ten years to build, so estimating the true cost is nearly impossible given fluctuating material prices, cost of capital and other unforeseen costs. Cost overruns for a nuclear reactor have averaged nearly 300 percent. The last nuclear power plant to go online broke ground in 1973 and wasn’t finished until 1996.
• Why are we picking on electrically-heated homes? Thirty percent of U.S. homes (according to EIA’s 2005 statistics) use electricity for heating. Many more use natural gas or heating oil, and most energy efficiency efforts focus on achieving efficiencies with those fuels. The impending nuclear power plant “retirement boom” provides a great opportunity to think about getting more efficient with electrically heated homes.
• Don’t nuclear power plants last longer than new furnaces? Nuclear plants have 40 year operational leases and can be extended for an additional 20 years. Different energy efficiency measures have different measure lives – LED light bulbs last less than 10 years, insulation and new furnaces can last for 30 years or more. For simplicity’s sake, we’re treating the measure lives of each option equally at 40 years.
• This is a lot of houses we’re talking about. Yes. If we want to avoid replacing some or all of the nuclear power plants that are going to reach the end of their operational lives within the next 20 years, we have to start retrofitting houses at volume now so we’re ready when plants need to start shutting down.
• Who pays for either of these two options? That’s a pretty complicated question and it certainly involves issues of rates and cost recovery within the utility regulatory field. We’re making the argument that investing in efficiency might be a better use of a utility’s resources than fully paying to build new nuclear power plants. Some innovative utilities are developing energy efficiency models that are increasingly cost effective, and work well for their shareholders and regulatory frameworks.

In the end, we don’t believe that any of these assumptions invalidate our conclusion that our country would be far better off increasing the efficiency of our housing stock through home retrofits over the next 20 years than replacing all our aging nuclear power plants. We can meet this impending energy challenge with half of the cost, create far more jobs and enjoy all the side benefits that come with going the retrofit route: healthier and more comfortable homes, lower utility bills for homeowners than what they would have paid, no increased burden of storing spent nuclear fuel for thousands of years.