Julie Osborn

Market trends in the U.S. ESCO industry: Results from the NAESCO database project

LBNL-49601 Market Trends in the U.S. ESCO Industry: Results from the NAESCO Database Project Principal Authors Charles A. Goldman, Julie G. Osborn, and Nicole C. Hopper, LBNL Terry E. Singer, NAESCO Energy Analysis Department Environmental Energy Technologies Division Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory University of California Berkeley, CA 94720 http://eetd.lbl.gov/ea/EMS/EMS_pubs.html May 2002 The work described in this paper was funded by the Assistant Secretary of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Power Technologies and Rebuild America Program under the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098.

Integrated assessment of dispersed energy resources deployment

The goal of this work is to create an integrated framework for forecasting the adoption of distributed energy resources (DER), both by electricity customers and by the various institutions within the industry itself, and for evaluating the effect of this adoption on the power system, particularly on the overall reliability and quality of electrical service to the end user. This effort and follow on contributions are intended to anticipate and explore possible patterns of DER deployment, thereby guiding technical work on microgrids towards the key technical problems. An early example of this process addressed is the question of possible DER adopting customer disconnection. A deployment scenario in which many customers disconnect from their distribution company (disco) entirely leads to a quite different set of technical problems than a scenario in which customers self generate a significant share or all of their on-site electricity requirements and additionally buy and sell energy and ancillary services (AS) locally and/or into wider markets. The exploratory work in this study suggests that the economics under which customers disconnect entirely are unlikely.

Investigation of residential central air conditioning load shapes in NEMS

This memo explains what Berkeley Lab has learned about how the residential central air-conditioning (CAC) end use is represented in the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS). NEMS is an energy model maintained by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) that is routinely used in analysis of energy efficiency standards for residential appliances. As part of analyzing utility and environmental impacts related to the federal rulemaking for residential CAC, lower-than-expected peak utility results prompted Berkeley Lab to investigate the input load shapes that characterize the peaky CAC end use and the submodule that treats load demand response. Investigations enabled a through understanding of the methodology by which hourly load profiles are input to the model and how the model is structured to respond to peak demand. Notably, it was discovered that NEMS was using an October-peaking load shape to represent residential space cooling, which suppressed peak effects to levels lower than expected. An apparent scaling down of the annual load within the load-demand submodule was found, another significant suppressor of the peak impacts. EIA promptly responded to Berkeley Labs discoveries by updating numerous load shapes for the AEO2002 version of NEMS; EIA is still studying the scaling issue. As a result of this work, it was concluded that Berkeley Labs customary end-use decrement approach was the most defensible way for Berkeley Lab to perform the recent CAC utility impact analysis. This approach was applied in conjunction with the updated AEO2002 load shapes to perform last years published rulemaking analysis. Berkeley Lab experimented with several alternative approaches, including modifying the CAC efficiency level, but determined that these did not sufficiently improve the robustness of the method or results to warrant their implementation. Work in this area will continue in preparation for upcoming rulemakings for the other peak coincident end uses, commercial air conditioning and distribution transformers.

Energy and Carbon Impact of New U.S. Fluorescent Lamp Ballast Energy Efficiency Standards

Climate change policy requires generation of carefully considered estimates of possible energy and carbon savings from various policies. There is always uncertainty in such estimates; we describe how these savings estimates were arrived at for the case of energy efficiency standards for fluorescent lamp ballasts. Several standards scenarios are described in detail along with all the assumptions that had to be made. We worked closely with the ballast industry to develop all of the engineering data needed to estimate energy savings when magnetic ballasts are replaced with electronic ballasts. Current market data was collected from distributors to establish ballast prices.