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.

We’ve had a busy month since announcing our most recent expansion in the Pacific Northwest. Now we’re on to the rest of the country! Welcome to our two newest customers, CPS Energy in San Antonio and the Illinois Home Performance with ENERGY STAR program, and to our newest team member, Tom DuBos.

New Energy Efficiency Program Customers

We’re excited to add two new clients to our roster this month.

• CPS Energy: One of the largest municipal utilities in the country, serving the San Antonio metro area, CPS Energy has chosen EnergySavvy’s online energy audit tool to help qualify and engage potential program customers for the CPS Energy Savers program. “EnergySavvy has really exceeded my expectations on customer service and the product itself. We’ve been particularly impressed with how easily customizable the software is to fit the look, feel and business requirements of our program,” said Carla De La Chapa, CPS Energy BetterBuildings Program Manager.



• Illinois Home Performance: A statewide initiative that coordinates numerous utilities and government programs, Illinois Home Performance with ENERGY STAR is one of a wave of new whole-home efforts to drive demand for multiple-measure retrofits in a cost-effective and innovative way. “We’ve been thrilled with EnergySavvy’s responsiveness and technological ability. They’ve genuinely been a pleasure to work with,” said Jamie Peters, Program Manager, Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, “Our customized EnergySavvy for Programs software was ready to go in only 3 weeks and we are looking forward to our new website generating real results.”

EnergySavvy Adds Key Sales Executive

Industry veteran Tom DuBos brings his experience in the utility industry to EnergySavvy as National Sales Director. In his new role, Tom will be responsible for growing EnergySavvy’s national footprint and working with our utility clients and industry allies.

Tom’s background in utility and energy services spans 23 years, most recently with Apogee Interactive, Inc. as Western Region Business Development Manager. He has worked in the industrial, commercial and residential sectors. He has a wide range of experience including metering systems, key account management programs, and customer web tools and services. He serves on the board of the Association of Energy Services Professionals (AESP), and he’s active in Northwest Public Power Association (NWPPA) and Western Energy Institute (WEI).

“We are thrilled to have Tom join our team,” said Aaron Goldfeder, CEO of EnergySavvy, “His deep experience in online energy efficiency customer web tools and engagement strategies will help EnergySavvy in our mission to bring innovative, engaging and effective tools to home energy efficiency programs.”

EnergySavvy CEO and Co-Founder Aaron Goldfeder was named as a Pivotal Leader for the second year in a row by the Pivotal Leaders Network, an organization recognizing clean tech business leaders in the Pacific Northwest.

Each year, the Network chooses “leaders who have the talent and business acumen to lead successful clean technology companies in the region over the next three to five years.”

Aaron was chosen as one of 47 to join the list, which was narrowed down from a total of 700 nominations from across Oregon, Washington, Idaho and British Columbia. Not only do these leaders span the region, but they also span a variety of fields ranging from larger private sector companies, start-ups government, higher education and non-profit organizations.

See the whole list at Pivotal Leaders.

A very-much-not-fun look at the inconsistent ways that energy efficiency measures are described in our industry

Developing an energy retrofit program that works involves putting together a big puzzle with lots of pieces: create a great consumer marketing concept; encourage social competitiveness in energy efficiency; measure rebate and marketing investments to ensure that they’re cost-effective; train contractors; the list just goes on.

Some of these pieces are really exciting to work on and fun to talk about. Today we’re going to tackle one that’s definitely not.

Not exciting. Not fun.

But it’s critical in analyzing the effectiveness of programs on an apples-to-apples basis within and across state boundaries: a universal taxonomy for installed energy efficiency and renewable measures. That’s a fancy way of saying, “We all have to use the same names for stuff.”

A Universal Taxonomy of Energy Efficiency Measures

In our work over the past few months with some of our clients – especially Utah Home Performance with ENERGY STAR, Clean Energy Works Oregon and Community Power Works (Seattle) – we’ve come to realize that there is no clear industry naming and categorization standard for measures that can potentially be installed in residential home energy projects.

Each and every in-home audit tool, industry database, utility rebate set that we’ve encountered thus far has used different naming conventions for efficiency measures. And there are multiple ongoing efforts to create industry standards, none of which, of course, match up exactly.

Among them:

• NREL Database of Residential Efficiency Measures: Maintained by NREL and updated every six months, this database seems to be the most comprehensive of the industry standards out there, and it includes typical cost data for specific upgrades within measures.
• Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Reporting Requirements: In support of the thirty four Better Buildings programs sponsored by the Department of Energy, an XML reporting schema was developed that allows each program to report back its results in terms of installed measures.
• HPXML Standard (Working Draft): Now under the leadership of the Building Performance Institute, the HPXML standard is meant to allow for standardized communications between home performance contractors and energy efficiency programs through software. (Full Disclosure: EnergySavvy’s CEO Aaron Goldfeder serves on the HPXML technical working group.)
• State-specific Measure Lists: Various state utility commissions maintain their own measure lists for the purposes of tracking savings associated with each measure implemented in the state. For instance, the California Public Utility Commission has its Database of Energy Efficient Resources (DEER), which has its own naming system for measures.

To give a couple of examples of what we mean:

These are minor differences, but different enough to make it impossible for multiple software systems to make apples-to-apples comparisons without a manual mapping exercise. More confusing is the taxonomy for measures involving foundation and floor insulation:

Out of necessity, we’ve been mapping the various measure names from “industry standards” efforts and in-home audit tools to create an EnergySavvy internal measure taxonomy. From that list, we can map back to any other standard, but there are inevitably one or two new measures from each source that just don’t fit into any existing measure name.

This gets even more complex for utilities and programs that operate across multiple states and have to contend with varying public service commission ‘deemed savings’ measure standards.

A Call to Action

Our goal with this blog post is to start a conversation, learn what other people are doing here and collaborate. We’ve got the luxury of being the “new guys” in the industry, which means that we often make dumb mistakes, but also that we sometimes see things in a different way that’s closer to our company’s founding DNA in web services, online marketing technology and software development.

Just about everyone in the industry wants to see advancements in better data and interoperability. If it can be done for real estate transactions and patient treatments in the medical industry, we can do it in energy efficiency. A few thoughts on how we can start to get there:

• If you’re the kind of data geek that actually does get excited about this, and made it to the end of this post, We’d love to hear your thoughts.
• If you’ve got another standard measure list that we should know about, map into our existing efforts, or rally around, please let us know!
• And if you are a utility or energy efficiency program, be sure to ask your software vendors about interoperability to at least make sure that they are supporting one of the emerging standards, at least until everyone picks a single winner.

Scott Case
VP Product Management, EnergySavvy
scottfoo@energysavvy.com