Hawaii Energy Efficiency Comprehensive Program Evaluations

From 2010 through 2015 for the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission, Evergreen staff led a team to evaluate Hawaii Energy's conservation and efficiency programs, covering the residential and non-residential sectors. The annual evaluations took an integrated approach and included impact, process, and market assessment research, and assessed changes in Hawaii Energy's programs as they were modified, eliminated, or added. Data collection and analysis tasks included participant and nonparticipant phone surveys, engineering analysis, on-site verifications, billing regressions, trade ally focus groups, and in-depth interviews with program managers, trade allies, and other market actors. A key focus was to describe and assess how well the overall portfolio was developed and managed, and how the Technical Review Manual (TRM) was updated.

The work included extensive impact evaluation activities to estimate savings associated with the programs' residential and commercial sector lighting interventions (upstream retailer/distributor incentives and downstream commercial prescriptive and custom rebates) as well as a review of net-to-gross values in use by similar programs around the country. Activities included:

• Review of Hawaii Energy’s energy savings assumptions documented in its TRM;
• Savings validation and measure installation verification including participant phone and on-site surveys and project file review;
• Review of sales records to determine the number of qualifying lighting measures sold through the Upstream Lighting Program each year;
• Analysis of Residential Peer Group Comparison pilot program participant and nonparticipant survey results and performance of billing analysis to inform an estimate of savings; and
• Market assessment to gain insights into various market aspects that may affect program performance, activities, and/or design.

In addition, Evergreen conducted a comprehensive baseline energy study in 2011, which assessed key characteristics of buildings, appliances, and equipment that use electricity providing a “baseline” from which to assess changes in buildings, equipment, appliances, and use patterns over time. Data and findings presented in the resulting report were based on a combination of comprehensive and in-depth data collection efforts. The Evergreen team conducted:

• 900 on-site surveys with single-family, multi-family (civilian and military) and small/medium commercial customers on three islands;
• 880 mail surveys with commercial customers covering five islands;
• 53 detailed on-site surveys with large businesses on three islands; and
• Case studies of the military and water/wastewater sectors.

Evergreen used several sources to develop sample frames, including Hawaiian Electric Company and U.S. Census data.