348 



BPA refused to allow SESCO to appeal any of these decisions to the BPA 

 Administrator, to any assistant administrator, to the "Leadership Team," to the 

 "Steering Committee," to the "Project Manager," or to the "Acquisition Management 

 Team." SESCO wrote to the Administrator, to the senior management, and to the 

 head of the bidding programs but was each point rebuffed. We have been given the 

 right of appeal and we have taken that step. Our complaint about our treatment by 

 the Negotiating Team will be decided -- by the Negotiating Team itself. 



The Negotiating Team's so-called "offer" to undertake a 5,000 house pilot was, 

 in our view, not genuine. SESCO had repeatedly stated that the low price offered 

 was contingent upon its being able to implement a project of reasonable scale, a 

 10,000-house minimum. The underlying reason for this "offer" may be evident in the 

 second part of its requirement--that the one 5,000-house project be redesigned to 

 resemble BPA's centrally-designed program. Thus, BPA's central planners sought to 

 eliminate any potential for an independent private sector "yardstick." 



The Negotiating Team's apparent change of attitude in the fall of 1992 coincided 

 a shift in the Negotiating Team's membership and with BPA's receipt of 

 weatherization savings data from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), a lab of the 

 U.S. Department of Energy ORNL has been conducing evaluations of BPA's 

 weatherization programs since the early 1980s, and has completed more than ten of 

 them to date. But there was a problem for BPA's headquarters staff. The ORNL 

 results were showing a significant decrease in the savings being realized with each 

 new year of treatment, as discussed below. 



Our repeated attempts to speak with BPA management have been met with 

 letters stating that we have to talk with the Negotiating Team. Our requests to the 

 Negotiating Team have met with refusals to negotiate or even meet with SESCO. 

 We await BPA decisions on whether to negotiate the remainder of the water heating 

 programs and any of the lighting programs, as well as resumption of the 

 weatherization negotiations. 



BPA Staff Seeks to Disregard Studies Critical of its Residential Weatherization 

 Program 



In late 1992, BPA staff received draft information that the latest measurements 

 were showing that BPA's residential weatherization program installations saved only 

 1330 kWh per treated house in the first post-treatment year. See Chart 1, taken from 

 the ORNL study The Study also showed that the first-year savings then significantly 

 deteriorated in the second and subsequent post-treatment years, by an average of 

 over 12% drop per year. See Chart 2, also from the ORNL study, plus an ERCE 

 longer terms study of the houses treated in 1982 and 1983. 



TESTIMONY OF RICHARD ESTEVES Page 8 



