AEP Health & Safety Repairs Wrap up

AEP's Health & Safety Repairs program has been completed.  In all, $329,000 was spent on 127 AEP customers' homes.  The program was designed to help pay for health & safety repairs on Weatherized homes.  A few highlights:

• 65 homes received new heating appliances because existing units were operating in an unsafe manner.
• 65 homes received repairs to mitigate existing moisture problems (installation of vapor barriers, roof repairs, sump pump installations, plumbing repairs, etc.)
• 34 damaged or unsafe water heaters were replaced.
• Over 160,000 cfm@50Pa was air sealed in the participating homes
• Over 78,000 square feet of attic insulation was installed
• Over 41,000 square feet of wall insulation was installed
• Just under 1,500 feet of pipe insulation was installed
• Over 22,000 square feet of foundation walls were insulated

AEP's service area is the north east corner of the state, so there were fewer CAPs participating in this program.  The final funding breakdown was as follows:

At this time there is no word about a continuation of this program in the future.  

2012-2013 Preliminary results

Some of the state results are winding their way through BEACon.  These are just preliminary numbers:

Average net natural gas savings: 192 therms (+/-10); 18.9% (+/-.01%)

Average local burn electric savings: 717 kWh (+/-133); 7.3% (+/-1.2%)

Average total electric savings: 843 kWh (+/-342); 1% (+/-2%)

Preliminary.

I'm still working on the Citizens Energy Group homes and reviewing the individual results more closely.

Preliminary.

Revised NACs for 2011-2012 Billing Analysis report

source: nflspinzone.com

Do you want the good news or the bad news first?  

I tend to vote for the bad news first.

Last spring when the Production reports were being generated there was a significant flaw with the weather normalization that affected nearly a third of the homes being modeled.  No, it wasn't a bug in BEACon, no there wasn't a formatting error with the consumption data from the utility companies.  

I forgot to use current weather data from NOAA...

Fortunately, for the majority of the homes, there was only one month where there was no weather data to help normalize the consumption data.  However, since NIPSCO provided consumption data for their customers in early 2014, there were many, many more clients affected by the lack of weather data.

Acting on feedback and independent investigation from a small handful of persistent Weatherizers, a review of the old consumption data with more current weather data was done.  And now comes the good news.

The average net natural gas savings during that evaluation period wasn't a tepid 15.4%, but a healthier 18.4%.  The average net natural gas savings went from 163 therms up to 200 therms.

In all, 10 weatherization providers were affected.  Nearly all had significant increases in their average net natural gas savings:

• Area Five
• original: 5.9%
• revised: 28.3%
• Area IV
• original: 16.9%
• revised: 23.1%
• CANI
• original: 10.9%
• revised: 27%
• Human Services
• original: 17.3%
• revised: 18.6%
• North Central CAA
• original: 15.9%
• revised: 25.5%
• Northwest CAA
• original: 14.9%
• revised: 23.3%
• Real Services
• original: 7.9%
• revised: 15.8%
• Housing Opportunities of Warsaw
• original: 7.2%
• revised: 17.4%
• Indiana Builders Association
• original: 10.3%
• revised: 13.2%
• Miami County YMCA
• original: 17.3%
• revised: 23.7%

Another possible solution to room pressure imbalances

Green Building Advisor had an interesting post about a new ventilation strategy for homes with central returns or other HVAC system problems.

The product is an interior door that has free area built into the door itself, while engineering to reduce the amount of sound transmission.  The door has an equivalent open area of 100 square inches.  So it will be able to handle imbalances that are too big for a simple door undercutting.  

The door will cost more than a tradition interior door.  But we've all come across that rare room that has no real wall space facing the main body of the house.  This door might help reduce pressure imbalances to more acceptable levels.

The door will be going into production soon.

Fall 2014 Wx Assistant fuel cost update

This is a little late, but the updated Investor Owned Utility, etc. fuel costs have been updated as follows:
$/kWh
Duke: $0.141
I&M: $0.112
IPL: $0.100
Vectren: $0.217
NIPSCO: $0.147

$/Mcf
Vectren: $10.11
NIPSCO: $7.34
Citizens Energy Group: $10.72

The 'average' weatherization home has been updated to reflect the more recent billing analysis report.  The average home is assumed to use 942 therms and 9,452 kWh annually.  All the other assumptions remain the same.

Vectren Share the Warmth Wrap up (2014) (Update)

Many thanks to the Weatherizers who helped with this year's Share the Warmth program.  Over $191,000 was spent on 94 homes weatherized between January and September.  The $191,000 from Share the Warmth was helped by over $422,000 of additional weatherization funds to weatherize those homes.


Some quick program facts:

• 54 unsafe furnaces were replaced with new, more efficient ones.
• Seven gas cook stoves were repaired, another four were replaced to help reduce high carbon monoxide production.
• 20 damaged or unsafe water heaters were replaced.
• Enough air sealing was done to patch a single 133 sqft hole.  Think the size of a two car garage door...
• Nearly 53,000 sqft of attic insulation was installed.  More than enough to cover 11 basketball courts in a warm coating of cellulose.
• Over 25,000 sqft of wall insulation was installed.  That is as big as seven IMAX movie theater screens.
• Enough pipe wrap was installed to stretch from end zone to end zone of a football field.

Finally, a brief breakdown of what was spent where:

I'm hopeful there will be a similar program beginning early in 2015.  Thank you all for your help!  

Updated to reflect corrected number of homes completed in the program.

Pre-weatherization consumption data is live!

Any Indiana weatherization program managers stumbling upon this post, I've got good news.  Well, news at the very least. 


Pre-weatherization consumption data has been uploaded for over 40,000 EAP clients who are also Vectren or NIPSCO customers.  Which means most programs will have some pre-weatherization normalized annual consumption (Pre NAC) showing up when they look at their wait lists. 


Pre NAC is also on display in the Wait List search tool (although in a slightly less functional format, no sorting here). 


It's only taken over a decade, but there is finally pre-Wx consumption information at your (somewhat easy) disposal.  Sorry for the delay.  Feel free to send any feedback my or IHCDA's way...

2011-2012 Indiana Billing Analysis Report

The 2011-2012 Billing Analysis report has been released.  Some of the highlights/key stats:

• Indiana's net natural gas savings was 163 therms (+/- 6 therms), a savings of 15.4%, (+/- .6%).
• WICAA's weatherization program in Brazil, IN had the highest net natural gas savings, averaging 338 therms in net natural gas savings, a reduction of 33%.
• The average total electric home saved about 1,500 kWh after being weatherized.
• The average 'local burn' home (a home heated with natural gas, lp gas, fuel oil, wood, something burned on the premise to create heat, you get the point...) saved an average of 776 kWh if it has some manner of air conditioning.  If the house had no air conditioning, a local burn home saved an average of 519 kWh after being weatherized.

Those results are based on the actual energy consumption of over 1,800 weatherized homes and nearly 4,800 energy assistance clients.

Vectren Share the Warmth status update

We are past the halfway point for this year's Share the Warmth program.  The next major deadline is at the beginning of July.  Of the $191,000+ in the program just under $80,000 has been reimbursed.  As of this weekend the reimbursements are as follows:

Those providers that were unable to meet the first benchmark have had those funds reallocated.  I will be approaching other providers shortly about receiving reallocated funds.  As is plain to see, I'll be expecting lots of claims over the next month.  It is important that the administrative costs have the proper backup documentation and are submitted by July 1st as well.  Given that there is often a time lag between the job being completed and everything getting properly entered into your fiscal software, getting the claim process started earlier will help.

Below is a close up showing the reimbursements to date, focusing on the individual providers.

AEP Health & Safety Repairs status update

We are nearing the half way point of AEP's Health & Safety Repair program.  I haven't done this with any other weatherization assistance utility funded program.  But I thought it might be helpful to see some pictures or different colored lines to communicate how much has been reimbursed for the program.

As of this weekend:

Now, for what matters going forward:

Please excuse the funky image quality.  They look ok on the computer screen, but after being pulled onto the site, they look rather dingy.  We're a little under halfway in the program and have reimbursed nearly half of the program's total funds.  There are still lots of funds to put to use, but quite a bit of time to do it in.  However, the majority of the funds remaining to be spent are in the hands of those providers that haven't claimed much since early February.

Spring 2014 Wx Assistant fuel cost update

Hello all!


It is almost April, so it is time to update your Weatherization Assistant fuel cost libraries.  The average fuel costs have been calculated for the major investor owned utilities and are listed below:


$/kWh
Duke: $0.127
I&M: $0.110
IPL: $0.096
Vectren: $0.168
NIPSCO: $0.135


$/Mcf
Vectren: $9.47
NIPSCO: $8.25
Citizens Energy Group: $11.28


The average weatherization home used 846 therms and 9986 kWh before being weatherized for this analysis.  The rest of the underlying assumptions remain the same.

Viewing recent local weather data

Fred Clade shared this with me the other day.

Indianapolis Climatological Data

Compared to digging through the monthly edited climate data, that link is much easier to get recent weather data at your finger tips.  No importing .csv files.  No long waiting, just the ease of drop down menus!

An interesting tidbit about the recent cold snaps in January.  There were 1387 HDD here in Indianapolis.  Historically, the average for January is 1145 HDD.  So for those of you here around Indy, you can tell your clients they can expect their heating bills to be about 21% more than they would be in a typical year.  Last year there were only 1083 HDD here in Indy, so they could expect a heating bill to be about 30% more than last year's bill.  Client Ed!

The process is a little different depending on what part of the state you want data for.  The link to the northeast (Fort Wayne) region is here.

As you can tell, the site is not the same.  To look at monthly data for the northwest part of Indiana, you need to select 'Preliminary Monthly Climate Data (CF6)', then pick the year and month you'd like to see. 

Northwest Indiana, Evansville,  and Cincinnati have a similar method.

2014 Vectren Share the Warmth

Has been approved.  Agencies with Vectren clients, be looking for MOUs in your mail.  There aren't any significant changes.  Client testimonials and pictures are still required.  Funding levels have increased a bit, and the time line is going to be shorter due to the MOUs not getting approved until February.  Here we go again!