Severe Weather CAN Impact Your M&V Calculations

It’s the “CAP” in EnergyCAP—”Cost Avoidance Program”—and it’s helping more than 800 organizations across North America to measure and verify the impact of their energy conservation measures.

But what happens when extreme weather threatens to hinder accurate calculations?

EnergyCAP’s founder and CEO, Steve Heinz, was a featured speaker at last month’s World Energy Engineering Congress in Washington, D.C., and his presentation was centered on M&V with an extreme weather twist. Steve provided examples of how severe weather—specifically extremely high or low temperatures—can stress buildings to the point that M&V calculations can be skewed. And he suggested options for addressing and accounting for abnormal conditions, evaluated by cost, practicality, and fairness.

EnergyCAP software has a Cost Avoidance module that calculates the savings attributable to energy management by comparing current utility bills with a normalized baseline year. The method was pioneered by Heinz in the 1980s, and fully complies with the IPMVP, Section C (www.EVO-World.org) “whole building method” of energy savings measurement and verification (M&V).

EnergyCAP’s standard M&V calculations apply to a wide range of applications, but there are some scenarios that may require special adjustments to accurately and fairly calculate avoided energy use and cost.

So, if you’re performing, or planning to perform, M&V calculations in a region that is susceptible to severe temperatures, I encourage you to review Steve’s presentation. Click here to download your copy. It’s a technical read, but worth the investment of time and effort.

If you’re new to the M&V arena and would like to learn more, please download our free eBook, An Introduction to Measurement & Verification.