Welcome to this first issue of M&V Focus. I hope you will appreciate the content of this first issue of M&V Focus as much as we enjoyed interacting with the authors to make it a reality. At EVO, we are also excited about creating valuable new content on the EVO Website.

The M&V concepts presented in the IPMVP are universal. Called by many the “mother of all M&V protocols,” the IPMVP is a living document which inspired many other codes and standards but also regulations and energy efficiency program frameworks. It has been maintained, updated and improved over the years thanks to dedicated volunteers from all continents, working consensually on EVO’s IPMVP Committee and thematic sub-committees.

By Pierre Langlois*

As the newly elected Chairman of the Board of the Efficiency Valuation Organization (EVO), it is my great pleasure to present the first issue of this new online magazine on measurement and verification (M&V). As many readers know, 2017 marked the 20^th anniversary of the International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol (IPMVP). The M&V concepts and options presented in the IPMVP are universal and they have been used throughout the world to assess the performances of energy efficiency projects but also for water savings as well as program evaluation.

By Greg Kats*

The International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol (IPMVP) was developed to solve a challenge: how to enable energy efficiency to become a more substantial industry. 25 years ago, energy efficiency projects were smaller standalone projects designed, documented and defined in hundreds of different ways that resulted in a hodge-podge of approaches, multiple documentation and transactions costs. This resulted in higher costs of energy efficiency projects and higher cost of financing, and an inability to use modern methods to financing energy efficiency. For example, it was hard or impossible to do off-balance sheet financing or pool energy efficiency (EE) projects for funding through bond markets.

By Colm Gallagher*

Most M&V practitioners generally have a go-to set of independent variables to employ when modelling each different energy system. For example, when performing M&V on a chilled water optimisation project in a commercial building, the outside air temperature will most often be sufficient to model the systems energy consumption, as this approach has been applied time and time again with proven effectiveness. The same can be said for residential buildings. In contrast to this are the many industrial buildings that pose quite a substantial problem. The complex energy systems in these buildings are influenced by many different variables. This means it can often be difficult to accurately model the consumption you are interested in using the common independent variables. As a result, more simplistic approaches can hinder the accuracy of a project.

By David Jump*

What’s cool about NMEC and M&V 2.0

There’s a lot of buzz in our state (California) right now around the concept of M&V 2.0 and Normalized Metered Energy Consumption (NMEC). The term was created as part of AB 802 in 2015 with the inclusion of the following proposed simplified means of counting energy efficiency savings:

[the commission shall...] “authorize electrical corporations or gas corporations to provide financial incentives, rebates, technical assistance, and support to their customers to increase the energy efficiency of existing buildings based on all estimated energy savings and energy usage reductions, taking into consideration the overall reduction in normalized metered energy consumption as a measure of energy savings.”

With that stroke of the pen, an old approach to energy savings and baseline treatment has been renewed. I would have dubbed it ORNMEC so that we don’t forget that it is Overall Reduction we are after, not just normalization. We should be stubborn and ‘ornery’ about that.

By Paul Calberg-Ellen and Eric Vorger*

This article deals with recent breakthroughs in the world of energy simulation and the corresponding questions about the application of the IPMVP to the new capabilities offered by energy building simulation programs.

By Colin Grenville*

The following is an exercise originally discussed in an interactive workshop session at the MAVCON’17 M&V conference in the U.K. in November 2017.

An Option C (whole facility) measurement approach is often proposed where numerous ECMs are installed at once and may have interactive effects which cannot be successfully isolated by local measurement. However, as M&V experience grows in U.K. energy services market we are increasingly discovering examples where using Option C is far from ideal. Using Option C introduces the real risk that changes in static factors (which could not reasonably be foreseen and considered when the M&V plan is written) could dwarf actual savings achieved by the installed ECMs. This risk increases where baseline data is not comprehensive and lacks proper schedules of installed energy consuming equipment. By the time a performance gap is identified, the chance of gathering baseline data may have passed, and calculating accurate non-routine adjustment becomes difficult or impossible.