20160722AVU to Staff 82.doc

AVISTA CORPORATION
RESPONSE TO REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

JURISDICTION: IDAHO DATE PREPARED: 07/19/2016
CASE NO: AVU-E-16-03 WITNESS: Heather Rosentrater
REQUESTER: IPUC RESPONDER: Linda Gervais
TYPE: Production Request DEPARTMENT: State & Federal Regulation
REQUEST NO.: Staff - 082 TELEPHONE: [phone]

REQUEST:

Please provide any reference material that Avista uses to estimate the energy savings for individual measures installed in a participant’s home under the weatherization program.

RESPONSE:

Prior to 2012, Avista claimed energy savings for the low-income weatherization program from the modeling software that the Agencies utilized. These savings claims sometimes were at a higher rate than what the utility and its 3rd party, independent evaluator were able to verify during impact evaluation. In 2012, a process adjustment was made to align the energy savings claimed for traditional residential rebate offers to also be utilized to estimate those claimed for the low-income weatherization program. As a result of 3rd party recommendations, an additional screen was added to claim no more than 20% of the specific home’s previous annual usage. As a result of these modifications, Avista no longer utilizes the agency modeling programs (EA5) for weatherization savings.

During the annual DSM business planning process, the Company primarily utilizes the work done by the 3rd party, independent evaluator’s impact evaluation, as well as relying upon the savings estimates from the Regional Technical Forum (RTF). The impact evaluations are included as appendices to our annual conservation reports and the work of the RTF can be found at: http://rtf.nwcouncil.org/.