Technology Assessment for Energy Efficiency Programs in Pacific Northwest

This paper introduces a hierarchical decision modeling framework for energy efficiency program planning in electric utilities. The proposed approach focuses on assessment of emerging energy efficiency technologies and is proposed to bridge the gap between technology screening and cost/benefit evaluation practices. The proposed approach is expected to identify emerging technology alternatives, which have the highest potential to pass cost/benefit ratio testing procedures, and contribute to effectiveness of decision practices in energy efficiency program planning. Proposed framework also incorporates a rank order analysis for testing the robustness of results from different stakeholder perspectives in an attempt to enable more informed decision making practices. Proposed framework was applied for the case of Northwest U.S., results of the case application and future research initiatives are presented.