20161115AVU to Staff 9.doc

AVISTA CORPORATION
RESPONSE TO REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

JURISDICTION: IDAHO DATE PREPARED: 11/10/2016
CASE NO.: AVU-E-16-06 WITNESS: Dan Johnson
REQUESTER: IPUC RESPONDER: Mike Dillon
TYPE: Production Request DEPARTMENT: DSM
REQUEST NO.: Staff-09 TELEPHONE: [phone]

REQUEST:

Referring to the Site Specific program, Page 5 of the Nexant Impact Evaluation states that “Within the last two years, Avista has increased their level of quality assurance and review on projects through the program” resulting in a realization rate of 99%. Please describe in detail the improvements the Company has made to their level of QA and review.

RESPONSE:

The following is the details regarding the improvements the Company has performed that has improved the quality assurance of site specific projects.

Avista implemented the Technical Top Sheet review model in June 2013. This process has been updated annually to maintain value for the process.
Avista implemented performance measurement in June 2014 for HVAC projects which must be modeled in response to the Cadmus 2013 evaluation. This process firmed up the realization rates for our most volatile projects as seen by the evaluator.
Avista added the following review model on April 24, 2015:
Review guidelines based on risk:
Measures that have an incentive of zero and an energy based simple payback of over 20 years require no report and no review, just a form letter to the customer.
Measures that have incentives between 0 and $2000 will be processed by the reporting engineer without any other review.
Measures that have incentives between $2001 and $25,000 will be reviewed before going to the customer by another qualified engineer.
Measures over $25,000 include additional technical management review prior to releasing to the customer.
Measures over $40,000 will be reviewed with a director prior to releasing to the customer.
Each review above will use the technical top sheet as a reviewing instrument with appropriate name and review level noted.
A completed project must be re-submitted through the technical review process if the incentive changes more than 10% from the original report.  The report and DFIC will always be changed and recorded when savings or incremental costs change upon completion.
We also added a pre-verification site visit for measures that will possibly have an incentive over $25,000
Finally, in July 2015, for projects that have an incentive of $40,000 or greater, are either unique or complex in nature, or are based on a new technology, Avista is using a third-party, or our current DSM evaluator, to determine the final incentive paid to the customer.

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