RTF Quarterly Newsletter: Quarter No. 39 January-March 2020

As the new year begins, the RTF has been looking to grow it’s measure portfolio. At the end of last year, staff complete a scoping effort for new measures and presented their findings to the RTF.  The group then voted to allocate resources to a number of these measures two of which were taken up this quarter.

This measure, installing a new high efficiency single speed or dual speed central air conditioner, was adopted by the RTF at January's meeting. There has been regional interest in cooling measures given global climate change and its anticipated consequences in the region. At this time, per the Council’s Northwest Regional Cost-Effectiveness test, this measure is not cost-effective, primarily because the energy savings occur in the summer and therefore do not align with the regional winter peak to get the benefit of deferred generation. However, for summer peaking utilities, this measure might have greater value. Also, as climate change progresses, more regional utilities may shift to having more summer load. At adoption, the RTF set the measure to Planning as there remains uncertainty around regional cooling loads and the relationship between SEER and EER and energy usage in the Pacific Northwest. RTF Staff is developing a Research Strategy to target this uncertainty, which it will bring to the RTF for review in coming months. 

This measure, adopted at the January RTF meeting, is the purchase of an efficient commercial or industrial efficient standalone fan. It does not cover embedded fans. Applicable fan types include: axial cylindrical housed, inline and mixed flow, panel, radial, centrifugal housed, centrifugal unhoused and power roof ventilator fans. Savings are dependent on fan type, drive type, speed control, and the fan system’s FEI and FEP rating. Incremental costs of fans are minimal making this measure very cost-effective. It is considered Planning as there are a number of key areas of uncertainty. There remain questions around: how fans are sized for actual loads, the operating hours of fans, the variability of loads etc. The RTF discussed a Research Strategy at the January meeting, but concluded that it needed further development. Staff will work on a revised research strategy with the Research and Evaluation Subcommittee before bringing the topic back to the RTF at a future meeting.    

Much of February’s meeting was focused on the Council’s 2021 Power Plan. RTF and Council staff gave presentations soliciting support from the RTF as a technical advisory body to the Council and providing insight on the ways this Plan might affect RTF work. A main topic of interest was how climate change will be modeled in the plan and how that may translate to the RTF.

The meeting began with a presentation laying out the Council’s process for selecting representative climate data to be used in the Plan to account for future climate change and its anticipated effect on temperatures (heating degree days and cooling degree days) and hydro generation. Council staff has presented on this selection a number of times and the presentation can be found here.

This was followed up with a presentation regarding how incorporating climate change and this adjusted weather will be rolled into the Council's energy efficiency estimates. For future energy efficiency measures that are weather sensitive, the future climate will result in differing savings than what has been seen historically. In order to incorporate this in the Plan savings assumptions, some adjustments will have to be made to how typical meteorological year weather files are used in energy simulation models. Staff will be modifying key TMY variables, such as temperature, solar radiance humidity etc., using this global climate model data. In addition to this climate change work, the Council’s EE team has spent much of this quarter working though supply curves for the Plan. They stopped by at the end of February’s meeting to get the RTF’s technical expertise on a few outstanding questions. As a technical advisory body to the Council the RTF is poised to step and support this Plan work.