364 



Mr. ESTEVES. Yes, in a police sense. But many people, after they 

 get the work done, actually increase their consumption of elec- 

 tricity because the/re no longer as careful as what they were doing 

 and what have you. 



So we take a look at what the savings are after the first year. 

 If they're below what we expect them to be, we go back in there 

 and talk to the customer and say, look, it's your house, you own 

 it, you do whatever you want with it, but if you want to see your 

 utility bill savings that you and I talked about earlier, you have to 

 continue doing the same tjrpes of things you were doing before. 



If you've kept the door closed to the spare bedroom and had the 

 thermostat turned off there before, continue doing that. 



Mr. DeFazio. So do we have a control group comparison here in 

 essentially the same market, same climate, same housing condi- 

 tions? Some parts of the region have better higher quality housing 

 than others, newer housing, more insulation or whatever. 



I'm really puzzled and I don't know — am I going to get to the bot- 

 tom of this disparity in the deterioration, whether it just has to do 

 with foUowup, whether it has to do with your initial treatment, 

 very different treatments. 



I mean, aren't your original treatments somewhat comparable? 

 These are somewhat standard when you go into an all electric 

 house. 



Mr. EsTEVES. I don't know what Bonneville does in the homes or 

 to what care they install it. I assume they do a good job. All I can 

 tell you is that we measure the results, that's what you're inter- 

 ested in. 



Mr. DeFazio. I'm just tr3dng to figure out what leads to the dis- 

 parity. 



Mr. ESTEVES. We like to believe that because of the incentive we 

 have to be comprehensive and to do a quality job to begin with, 

 perhaps we have a little bit of an edge over the average contractor 

 involved. Perhaps that accounts for part of it. 



But I think part of it, too, just may be in the way the customers 

 are selected to participate. For example, in the Bonneville pro- 

 grams, in order to participate, you have to put up 30 to 40 percent 

 of the money, which is frequently $800 to $1,000 worth of money 

 up front. 



Well, for someone to want to do that, they have to be very excited 

 and very angry about their bills and very interested in doing the 

 savings. Perhaps they had a very heightened awareness in the first 

 year or two because of this and then after a while it goes away. 

 So the5r're not as sensitive to the conservation as they might have 

 been to start with. 



Mr. DeFazio. I don't know. It's interesting. I'll ask BPA to look 

 at that. Thank you. I appreciate that. Mr. Johnson, on the 

 Goldendale project, I'm just curious about the numbers there. Is 

 there something — I mean, is this really innovative unproven wind 

 technology that's going to come in at this price? Is it something off- 

 the-shelf that's operating elsewhere? 



Mr. Johnson. It's not something off-the-shelf. It's a state-of-the- 

 art wind turbine and this project, of course, was selected together 

 with Bonneville competitively. 



Mr. DeFazio. Is it operating elsewhere? 



