The 2016 AESP Energy Award Winners

Over 310,000,000 kWh saved and counting. That’s the amount of estimated savings from AESP’s 2016 Energy Award Winners so far. Presented this past February 2016 in Phoenix, the AESP Energy Awards recognized creative thinking, new approaches and problem-solving in the energy efficiency industry. Read all about these award winning programs below.

Watch for the announcement of 2017’s winners at AESP’s 27th National Conference in Orlando on February 13, 2017. 

AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN PROGRAM DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION - RESIDENTIAL
PSE&G, for Residential Multifamily Housing Program

Through this program, PSE&G is educating the multifamily sector to embrace and recognize the value of energy efficiency and the positive impact it has on building operations. PSE&G’s program assists residential multifamily buildings in New Jersey to invest in energy efficiency improvements by providing building owners with up-front financing to remove the program participation cost barrier. PSE&G provides an on-bill payment option allowing building owners to repay their share of the project costs over a number of years. The program’s success is exemplified by its participation to date; 46 completed projects representing more than 400 buildings with 11,000 individual living units. The completed projects have electric energy savings of 9,360,242 kWh with 728 kW reduction, and natural gas savings of 2,256,290 therms.  In addition to the completed projects, there are a significant number of additional projects underway comprised of another 300 buildings, with 8,000 living units.

AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN PROGRAM DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION - NONRESIDENTIAL
Energy Trust of Oregon, for Path to Net Zero

Energy Trust of Oregon’s New Buildings program, called Path to Net Zero, is triggering a wave of high-performance design and construction that will lead commercial buildings in Oregon to be among the most energy efficient in the world. It is the first program in the country to offer structured incentives to push innovative design toward net-zero and to offset costs. The Path to Net Zero program approaches building owners and their design teams with meaningful offers and a specific target for their efforts, which is zero net energy. In addition to ambitious goal setting as the foundation of the offering, they created a roadmap for getting from current design to a net-zero status by incentivizing and providing guidance for each step of the way. The program enrolled more than 30 Path to Net Zero projects in 2015 and trained over 500 architects, engineers, consultants, contractors, owners and developers. 

AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN PRICING AND DEMAND RESPONSE
CenterPoint Energy, for its Residential Demand Program

This Residential Demand Response Bring Your Own Device Program (BYOD) run by CenterPoint Energy, Houston Electric is a significant business model innovation that will enable cost effective demand response for many utilities. By leveraging the customer acquisition and program management strengths of four participating sponsors, CenterPoint Energy was able to implement a residential emergency demand response program with very low risk, low cost and high customer satisfaction. This model combines the low costs and simple implementation of a BYOD program with the centralized management and control of a utility-run program for the best of both worlds. Four program sponsors enrolled 10,728 homes for the 2016 program that yielded a total of 13.9 MW savings across two, three-hour test events. This new model makes implementing a demand response program much more accessible for utilities across the U.S.

AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS – RESIDENTIAL
Hydro One, for peaksaver PLUS

When customers sign up for the peaksaver PLUS® program, Hydro One installs a free programmable thermostat that allows them to remotely control their AC. This type of program runs into the issue of ever diminishing number of potential participants, thus the challenge is to take a fresh approach to attract the attention and convert those who have not yet enrolled. The solution is the Joule thermostat and display, catering to the attraction we have for elegance and functional design. Not only does the glowing color communicate to participants whether they are in off-peak, mid-peak or on-peak billing hours, but readouts show exactly how much electricity they’re using and how much it costs, in real time. The Joule was marketed as a desirable piece of consumer technology for the home. The results soon confirmed the effectiveness of the approach and within 8 months, the campaign had 4,005 enrollments, exceeding the target by 67 percent.

AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS – NONRESIDENTIAL
Pacific Gas & Electric, for Step Up and Power Down

Step Up and Power Down brings innovative marketing and communication tools to engage occupants of commercial buildings to save energy. The commercial portion of this initiative launched in San Francisco and San Jose in June 2015. The campaign includes three levels of marketing and communications. First, and broadest, the campaign raises awareness throughout the entire community with unique experiential marketing and out-of-home and digital media. Second, the campaign engages Energy Champions who have pledged to reduce energy waste with training, personalized software tools and supportive communications. Finally, and perhaps most unique, the campaign provides resources to those Energy Champions to engage their coworkers in collective pursuit of a community-wide energy reduction goal. At time of writing, all indications are that the campaign will meet the goals of 1,000 business participants and 45 million kWh of annual energy savings by the end of 2016.

AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN MARKET RESEARCH AND EVALUATION
Cadmus, for Codes and Standards Program Evaluation

This effort was inspired by the need to provide an accurate, defensible estimate of the savings attributable to California IOUs’ energy codes and appliance standards (C&S) program. Because C&S adoption is unlike a traditional DSM program (with voluntary participants, nonparticipants, incentives, and other features), impact evaluation cannot follow standard methods. And although an initial evaluation protocol existed, to conduct the first-ever C&S program evaluation, Cadmus broke new ground and developed several innovations including:

• Developing a process for verifying the IOUs’ ex ante savings estimates for each code and standard
• Designing reliable approaches for quantifying the degree of compliance with each code and standard
• Creating an interactive, online methodology for estimating naturally occurring market adoption to adjust C&S savings for natural efficiency improvements
• Developing a technique for attributing an appropriate share of savings to the program
• Creating a comprehensive and flexible tracking and analysis tool to account for all these factors and integrate each new C&S cohort into a common savings framework.

AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
NTC Corporate, for Trickle Up! Program

In this program, a large energy services provider partnered with NTC during the academic year to create an innovative educational programming module. The program is designed to move the message of conservation, and EE kits, into the community through live educational events in K-12 schools. The schoolchildren deliver the messaging home to their parents, the true residential customers. The program reached schools through the following multi-platform communications tools:

• Live in-school theatre performances
• Student workbooks/Teachers Guides
• Online educational programming and games through www.NTCplayworks.com
• Downloadable classroom digital activities/lessons
• Classroom/school posters

The 2014-15 school year campaign resulted in 46,709 energy efficiency kits delivered, and 294,342,314 kWh saved. The 2015-16 school year resulted in 44,964 kits distributed in 1,344 schools.  

ONE TO WATCH AWARD
Michael Goldman, Eversource Energy

Michael Goldman’s tenure at Eversource Energy has been characterized by innovation and contributions to the wider energy efficiency community. He has been a prolific publisher and presented at numerous industry conferences, including AESP, IEPEC, ACEEE and NYSERDA. His willingness to tackle difficult topics in the EM&V field have led to increasing roles of responsibility both within Eversource and the wider Massachusetts evaluation community. He is the supervisor of energy efficiency program evaluation and the statewide lead for one of the three Massachusetts research areas that are responsible for cross sector research, and a primary author of the 2016 Massachusetts Strategic Evaluation Plan. Through his publications and conference appearances, he has impacted the wider evaluation community as well.