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Sustaining Long-Term Energy Savings for a Major Texas State Agency Performance Contracting Initiative
Date
2007-12Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The Texas Mental Health and Mental
Retardation agency, now part of the Texas Health and
Human Services Commission, was challenged to deal
with regularly deteriorating infrastructure at twentythree
large campuses located throughout the state
during large statewide budget cuts in 2003. Repair
and replacement funding was considerably reduced
with costs amounting to more than $250 million. The
agency therefore decided to take advantage of new
state legislation passed in the prior biennium
allowing state agencies to use utility savings
performance contracting as a means to replace aging
and inefficient equipment. In such contracts, the
utility savings will pay for the more efficient
equipment cost over a fifteen-year period.
The utility savings are measured over the life of
the contract in order to ensure the savings stream and
maintain the savings guarantee. The agency chose an
energy services firm specializing in performance
contracting. This company uses a utility bill analysis
software tool based on cooling degree-days and
heating degree-days. To date, savings have
accrued for over two years for the first phase of the
project and are presented in this paper for one of the
measured electric meters. This paper focuses on the
on-going savings stream to demonstrate the
importance of continued measurement and
verification on a representative meter at the Austin
State Hospital located in Austin, Texas. In this
paper, the Energy Services Company (ESCO) savings
results are compared to savings results calculated
from a regression analysis software package using
average outdoor air temperature data and actual preand
post-retrofit data. The software used as the
comparison calculates simple mean, two-parameter
(2P), three-parameter (3P) change point, or fourparameter
(4P) change point models to be used as the
utility baseline. To accurately account for the
guaranteed savings, it is necessary to apply detailed
as well as practical measurement and verification
techniques. The agency continues to work closely
with the ESCO to generate a savings persistence
program that both parties can effectively put into
practice; thus ensuring long-term goals are met.
Description
The file with the "a" is the PowerPoint presentation given at the Hot and Humid Conference.Citation
Culp, C.; Bou-Saada, T. E. (2007). Sustaining Long-Term Energy Savings for a Major Texas State Agency Performance Contracting Initiative. Energy Systems Laboratory (http://esl.tamu.edu); Texas A&M University (http://www.tamu.edu). Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /6305.