RTF Quarterly Newsletter: Quarter No. 60 April — June 2025

Measure Highlights

Commercial and Industrial Fans

At its April meeting, the RTF approved updates to its Commercial & Industrial Fans UES measure. This planning measure is for the purchase of an efficient commercial or industrial efficient standalone fan; it does not cover embedded fans. The updates incorporated newer datasets and revised the methods for determining load factor and fan cost. The RTF voted to keep the category as planning and extend the sunset date to April 30, 2027. However, at the April meeting the RTF held off on updating the measure’s research strategy to give more time to review findings from a pertinent NEEA/Cascade Energy study. The Research and Evaluation Subcommittee met on April 18 to review this information and other analysis helping to refine the scope of the updated research strategy. At its May meeting, the RTF approved the updated research strategy, adding language about research staging and clarifying that airflow and pressure managements are needed (it was previously listed as and/or), as well as adding a caution about a potential source of bias. This measure offers significant potential for savings in the region with 56 aMW in the commercial sector and 82 aMW in industrial facilities.

One to One Ductless Heat Pumps

In May, the RTF adopted a new One to One Residential Ductless Heat Pumps (DHP) UES measure. It covers installation of a single head and single outdoor unit ductless heat pump in the main living space of a single family or manufactured home that has  electric resistance zonal heat. The RTF set the category to planning for single family and small saver for manufacture homes, and set the sunset date to May 31, 2028. This measure marked the first of a suite of new heat pump measures that the RTF is in the process of developing with the intention of ensuring that programs can achieve the maximum energy savings. The One to One DHP measure and the upcoming Whole Home DHP, which will cover multi head DHPs, will potentially replace the existing RTF DHP measures.

Duct Sealing

The RTF in June updated two UES measures for duct sealing single family homes and manufactured homes, respectively. Both measures are for sealing the ductwork in unconditioned spaces in homes with central electric or gas HVAC systems. The RTF made minor updates given the limited new data to support updating the measure assumptions. For the single-family home measure there are two eligibility paths that includes a visual inspection or a visual inspection and duct blast testing. The RTF discussed that these pathways may make implementing the measure challenging for programs, as well as how homes with centrally ducted heat pumps are addressed. The RTF set a two year sunset date to allow time for the RTF to complete its suite of new heat pump measures and allow time for staff to work with the region to determine appropriate scope for the duct sealing measure.  

Deactivated Residential Air Purifiers

At its April meeting, the RTF voted to deactivate its Residential Air Purifiers UES Planning Measure. RTF determined that there was a  misalignment between the measure’s efficiency metric and consumer usage patterns. Consumers are likely to set their units to a speed setting based on sound preferences or other reasons. Given this, there is no way to adequately compare inefficient and efficient units. Customers may operate an inefficient unit at low speed and an efficient unit at medium speed, which would negate any potential savings.

Subcommittee Roundup

The Research and Evaluation Subcommittee met in April to discuss research approaches to commercial refrigeration units, commercial and industrial fans and commercial connected thermostats. 

The Residential HVAC subcommittee met in early May. Staff solicited feedback on the development of a new ductless heat pump measure for electric resistance zonal single family and manufactured homes.

The Small and Rural Subcommittee meet in late May for one of its quarterly meetings.

The Implementers Group Subcommittee met in June to go over work being planned and data outreach on various measures under review.

The Connected Thermostats Subcommittee met in late June to dicuss moving the Centrally Ducted Heat Pump (CDHP) measure suite forward which included discussing Retrocommissioning for existing CDHPs in order to make them operate as much as a heat pump as possible and the conversion of Electric Furnace homes to Minimal Electric Resistance Single Speed CDHPs.