Spring 2015 Wx Assistant fuel cost update

Updated vendor fuel costs for the major investor owned utilities are as follows:

$/kWh
Duke: $0.126
I&M: $0.12
IPL: $0.096
Vectren: $0.216
NIPSCO: $0.138

$/Mcf
Vectren: $8.832
NIPSCO: $8.028
Citizens Energy Group: $9.137

These fuel costs are based on the newest average pre-NAC for local burn homes from the 2012-2013 Billing Analysis report.  The average pre-NAC for natural gas was 1,016 therms.  The average pre-NAC for electricity was 10,382 kWh.  The monthly percentage of fuel consumption assumptions remain the same as they have been.

2012-2013 Billing Analysis Report - Indiana Weatherization Program

The Billing Analysis Report for homes Weatherized between April 1, 2012 and March 31, 2013 was completed at the end of March.  Here are a few highlights from the full report.

• 2,341 households were weatherized, serving 5,423 people.
• Average net natural gas savings of 264 therms (+/- 10), 22.6% (+/-.8%).
• The state average of 264 therms is the largest average measured since INCAA has been performing billing analysis for the entire state.
• Average gross electric savings for electrically heated homes of 1,571 kWh (+/-294).

The average net natural gas percent savings are shown in Figure 7 from the Billing Analysis report.  Ninety six percent of Indiana's Weatherization providers were able to meet IHCDA's net natural gas savings benchmark of 15 percent. 

Natural gas is approximately $1.00 per therm on average in Indiana.  So each therm saved is another dollar each weatherization household has to spend on something other than their gas bill.  Figure 8 from the report shows how many therms (and roughly dollars) each client saved on average.  $264 per year might not seem like much, but it is more than 1% of the average weatherization client's household income, assuming the household income is at the Federal Poverty threshold for a family of two.  The CAPs at the left hand side of the chart are worth noting.  They made an even bigger fiscal impact on their weatherization client's households.  And these energy savings are persistent for the lifetime of the retrofits, which means they will last for years to come, stretching the savings out into the future for the people living in that home.

The Billing Analysis process has begun again for the 2013-2014 DOE cycle.  So program managers can expect requests from me for additional data and fuel release forms in the near future.

2012-2013 Billing Analysis results (updated 2015-02-10)

The billing analysis results for homes weatherized in the 2012-2013 DOE cycle will be trickling out over the next few weeks.  As they do, I'll be updating the results for the agencies that have been sent out.  The state average net natural gas savings is about 32 percent higher than last year's average (from 200 therms to 264 therms).  The average natural gas percent savings was up about 23 percent, from 18.3 percent to 22.6 percent.

Agency	NAS	%
NWICA	301	25.5%
RS	236	20.0%
Area IV	189	19.7%
Area Five	294	27.2%
CAGI	258	21.9%
CANI	206	19.6%
CAPE	377	27.7%
CFS	220	19.3%
COWI	73	9.8%
HSI	302	35.1%
ICAP	291	25.5%
CICAP	516	27.2%
HUEDC	213	24%
LHDC	219	35.5%
NCCAA	212	18.8%
OVO	580	51.2%
SCCAP	227	38.8%
SIEOC	155	18.4%
TRICAP	189	31.4%
WICAA	209	26.9%
PACE	486	33.8%
CASI	325	18.9%
PWC	227	24%
INDIANA	264	22.6%

And that is all of them.  Next up is the statewide report...

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%

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.

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.

Pricing out tiered utility rate structures

I've gotten a few questions about how to determine annual energy costs when utilities have a tiered rate structure.  Here is a walk through for one method of modeling the annual electric costs. 

This model assumes that the house is NOT heated with electricity and that there is a summer cooling load.  So if the house is located in the Indianapolis, Evansville, or Cincinnati weather regions, this modeling would be appropriate.  If your homes are located in the Chicago, South Bend, or Fort Wayne regions, a smaller cooling load might be more appropriate.  If there is a need for this manner of modeling from the northern areas, I'll work on that later.

This table shows an assumed monthly allocation of how much electricity is consumed each month.  The percent allocation show below is what was used in the most recent DOE priority list run.  That analysis was based on the average electric consumption during the 2009-2010 evaluation period: 11,323 kWh.

Monthly profile	% of annual consumption		Monthly Consumption
January	0.068		769.964
February	0.051		577.473
March	0.05		566.15
April	0.051		577.473
May	0.06		679.38
June	0.115		1302.145
July	0.17		1924.91
August	0.142		1607.866
September	0.103		1166.269
October	0.063		713.349
November	0.063		713.349
December	0.064		724.672
Total	1.000		11323

This breakdown can then be used to determine the monthly bills of the hypothetical utility customer.  The sum of the 12 monthly bills divided by the number of kWh used during those twelve months (11,323) will tell what the average cost per kWh is for the purpose of NEAT & MHEA.

Update:
The following is a similar benchmark to use for determining average annual fuel costs for the small handful of natural gas providers that are not Vectren, NIPSCO, or CEG.  These are the monthly consumption amounts that can be used to determine the annual fuel costs (along with the utility rate tariffs):

Monthly profile	therms
January	169.671
February	140.408
March	113.366
April	65.9213
May	32.7063
June	13.425
July	10.2859
August	10.8714
September	21.7202
October	58.3251
November	106.783
December	153.517
Total	897

 

BEACon is out of beta!

The first test run of consumption data from the 2011 - 2012 evaluation period was run on a small section of data from Vectren this morning.  Another larger run should be completed next week.  The quicker the additional information comes back in from all the CAPs, the quicker the formal requests for data can be made to all the utility vendors. 

I will do my best to share the weather normalized consumption data with Roeing so it can be fed back into the Weatherization database's waiting list in a timely manner!

Beginnings of the 2011-2012 Billing Analysis report

The 2011-2012 billing analysis report is slowing inching forward.  Requests for missing information have been sent out to program managers.  Once those have all been returned, the utility data requests can begin.  In the mean time, here is a breakdown of provider production during the reporting period.

Fifty seven percent of the homes weatherized were done by the legacy providers and 43% were weatherized by the new providers.  The six most productive providers weatherized about half (50.5%) of all the homes in Indiana:

• Indiana Builders Association - 1,852
• Northwest Indiana Community Action - 481
• Hoosier Energy REC - 412
• Real Services - 375
• Community Action of Northeast Indiana - 287
• South Central Community Action Program - 280 

New Site Built and Mobile Home Priority lists - Incidental Repairs!

If you haven't heard from IHCDA already, DOE has approved a new method of determining how much can be spent on incidental repairs associated with energy conservation activities.  I won't go into the details much, as IHCDA is taking the lead on that front.  Just ask Ray to explain how it works.  I do want everyone to know that the new hard copy versions of the work orders have been on the Intelligent Weatherization site for a short while. 

Updated versions of the digital job books should follow, but not in the immediate future.  Between Add a Hole field training, University of Illinois ventilation research and other field trainings, it is looking like it would be the end of the month at the very earliest before any of those are updated.  Speaking of the Add a Hole training, there is a new line in the pressure diagnostics page of the site built work order form where zonal cfm leakage rates can be documented.  Before the new work orders are integrated into the digital job books, there are other electronic forms that are due for some user interface changes.  Tom Andrews is doing an excellent job of beta testing these electronic versions of the forms and finding some bugs and UI tweaks that could be made.  Be on the lookout for some updates to the 62.2 spreadsheet...

For those of you in the know...

During the 2010 - 2011 DOE grant cycle INCAA was a subcontractor for two weatherization providers, WECC and CAPWI.  That is obviously a conflict of interest for INCAA to evaluate and report on homes that INCAA also weatherized.  To alleviate that conflict, Dr. William Hill was hired to perform an independent analysis of those houses that INCAA 'touched' either as a whole house contractor, or as an auditor.  His independent analysis can be found here.

2010 - 2011 Indiana Billing Analysis Report

2010 - 2011 Indiana Billing Analysis Report

The billing analysis report for homes weatherized between April 1, 2010 and March 31, 2011 has been released.  Some of the highlights:

• The state averaged 17.9% savings (+/- .4%); 166 therms annually (+/- 4 therms)
• The average provider annual therm savings ranged from over 400 therms (WECC) to less than 90 therms (PWC and HOW)

On average, the legacy providers (providers that were weatherizing before IHCDA expanded the number of providers during ARRA) saved more therms than the new providers.  The legacy providers averaged about 189 therms annually.  The new providers averaged about 141 therms annually. 

First, a little optimism.  Over two thirds of the providers were able to average savings greater than 20% for natural gas consumption.  Something to bear in mind when looking at these charts.  The Indiana Builder's Association (IBA) weatherized one in three houses during this time period.  So the IBA is going to have a significant impact on all the state averages.  That explains why the state average is so low relative to the majority of the other providers.  All those providers achieving more than 20% savings aren't weatherizing many homes, & don't have as big an effect on the state average.

Percent savings are a decent way of comparing different providers working on different homes in different parts of the state.  But what matters is the number of therms/kWh saved. Because those translate into dollars.  To keep the math simple, a therm of gas costs about $1 (actually, a little less, but go ahead and round up to keep the math less tedious). 

Before anyone thinks of doing any cost/benefit analysis with the information above, please keep in mind that this is ONLY natural gas data.  Before any cost/benefit type thoughts are even entertained, any electric savings should be included.  Unfortunately, NIPSCO, Vectren, and a very large number of local utility providers were able to provide consumption data for this report.  That leaves out three very large electric providers, which makes it difficult to say very much about total energy savings. 

That said, averaging 166 therms shows there is room for improvement.  Which isn't a surprise.  Given the strains of ARRA production goals and bringing new providers online and up to speed, I'm surprised to see the average savings as high as it is. 

One area I think could & should be improved is increasing the amount of energy consumed before the house is weatherized.  Not every house getting weatherization needs to be an energy hog.  But it is very difficult to squeeze big therm savings from a house that isn't using much energy in the first place. 

There will be a few posts in the future looking at some details of this dataset that wouldn't fit well into the official report.  But if anyone has any ideas of topics they would like to be further flushed out, please let me know in the comments or email me.

Billing Analysis reports from year's past

IHCDA's billing analysis report for homes weatherized between April 1, 2010 and March 31, 2011 is wrapping up.  It should be finished by the end of the month along with each provider's Production Reports.  In the mean time, here are links to some of the most recent state reports INCAA produced for IHCDA:

2007-2008

2008-2009

2009-2010 (includes the beginning of ARRA)

Combustion Lab photosphere

INCAA's Combustion Lab is viewable as a Google photosphere.