Measure costs – the forgotten child of energy efficiency analysis

摘要

The current body of knowledge related to measure cost developmentand estimation in regulatory and program design applicationsis small, especially compared to that for estimatingmeasure impacts, and innovations have lagged. In this paper,we draw upon our experience conducting measure cost studiesin California and investigating ex ante measure cost valuesused in other jurisdictions across the United States to frame theprimary regulatory and program planning needs related to exante measure costs. We then provide a comprehensive overviewof the key analytic and data collection challenges in the contextof those needs, including tradeoffs between measure granularityand data requirements, equipment price forecasting, dualbaselines, interactions with codes and standards, and estimatingincremental measures costs for custom and new constructionprograms. Finally, we present examples of emerging datacollection and analysis approaches that address some of thesechallenges and provide a roadmap for measure cost researchand data development going forward.