Bonneville Power Administration's Purchasing of Energy Savings

Abstract

The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) is conducting a commercial buildings retrofit program in the Pacific Northwest by making payments to a sponsor, such as an energy service company or architectural and engineering firm, for energy savings which actually occur in a commercial building. This effort is one of several activities BPA is conducting to develop the capability to conserve energy in the commercial sector of electrical energy use. This paper describes the benefits of the approach, the program design, lessons learned through field testing the approach, and how the program has been redesigned. In the field test of the approach, BPA awarded contracts to five sponsors to retrofit 29 commercial buildings. Each sponsor located interested building owners, performed energy audits, negotiated agreements with each building owner, and has arranged for the financing, installation, operation, and maintenance of electrical energy conservation measures (ECM's). A major hurdle to successfully implementing the field tests was developing the experience and capability within sponsors to complete transactions. In most cases, these sponsors have not provided such comprehensive energy conservation services to building owners before. However, evaluating the proposals, negotiating contracts, and implementing projects with those sponsors selected to participate leaves us optimistic about their ability to succeed.