20240916AVU to Staff 9.pdf

RECEIVED
Monday, September 16, 2024
AVISTA CORPORATION IDAHO PUBLIC
RESPONSE TO REQUEST FOR INFORMATION UTILITIES COMMISSION
JURISDICTION: IDAHO DATE PREPARED: 09/10/2024
CASE NO: AVU-E-24-09/AVU-G-24-03 WITNESS: N/A
REQUESTER: IPUC RESPONDER: Kim Boynton
TYPE: Production Request DEPARTMENT: Energy Efficiency
REQUEST NO.: Staff-09 TELEPHONE: [phone]
REQUEST:
For each recommendation from the evaluation of the Company's NEEA program,please explain if
the Company has requested the recommended action from NEEA for the 2025-2029 Business
Cycle.
RESPONSE:
While Avista considers the above request to be outside of the scope of this proceeding — as the
future 2025-2029 Business Cycle bears no relevance to the Company's request for a determination
of prudence for its prior 2022-2023 program years — the Company provides the following
information in response to the request.
The Company has had ongoing dialogue with NEEA pertaining to each recommendation from the
NEEA evaluation. Provided as Staff-PR-09-Attachment A is a memo from NEEA to Idaho Power
and Avista Utilities, dated May 4, 2023, which addresses each recommendation in detail. In its
memo, NEEA agrees to comply with recommendations 1, 2 and 4, and clarifies that the
organization's current practices are already in compliance with recommendations 5,6 and 8.Please
see page 5 of Staff-PR-09-Attachment A for NEEA's response to recommendation 3, page 7 for
their response to recommendation 7, and pages 8-11 for recommendations 10-18.
Regarding recommendation 9, NEEA, in its memo, agreed to evaluate this recommendation
further. Since that time, NEEA staff has worked with Avista, NEEA's Cost Effectiveness
Advisory Committee (CEAC), and a third-party evaluator, NMR, to assess the existing influence
evaluation methodology and determine whether baseline assumptions should be adjusted. NMR
has committed to deliver a final assessment pertaining to this question by the end of 2024.
Additionally, NEEA provided further information on its process and timeline to assess
recommendation 9 at its November 30, 2023 CEAC meeting. The slide deck from that meeting is
provided as Staff-PR-09-Attachment B; the information regarding these recommendations can be
found on slides 73-83.
As part of these efforts, Avista also asked NEEA to prepare cost-effectiveness projections for a
number of scenarios in which NEEA was to claim less than 100% of code-related savings. Those
calculations, provided to Avista in May of 2024, are included as Staff-PR-09-Attachment C.