370 



Mr. DeFazio. Would you be prepared at this point to comment 

 in any depth on Mr. Esteves' allegations about the comparative de- 

 terioration in the treatments between your program and what they 

 might make available or would you rather do that in writing after- 

 wards? How would you like to do that? Or both? 



Ms. HiCKEY. I'd prefer a combination. Basicallv, I think he's 

 largely confused some occurrences over about the last six months 

 and I'm not aware of any substantial deterioration of the kind that 

 he's noting in our program. We've probably got the most rigorous 

 evaluation of persistence over time of weatherization measures of 

 any utility in the country and our experience has been that they 

 do persist. 



But there's a methodologicsd issue I am aware of. We have con- 

 sistently compared participant savings with non-participant sav- 

 ings to end up with the net savings from the program. We do this 

 because you want to be sure that you're actually advancing savings 

 over what would happen in the market without your program. 



As time has gone on, different technologies are available. There 

 are different prices for energy, and non-participants are doing 

 more, and more. In addition, our statistical sample eroded to the 

 point that we weren't sure that we were getting a valid evaluation 

 of those resists. So, we had to make some changes over about the 

 last six months and responded to do that. 



One of the most disturbing things that he said to you was that 

 we get evaluations and find out that the savings are lower than we 

 anticipated, and then we retain our estimates as the pre-evaluated 

 savings. That is absolutely not true. We think we lead the country 

 in ev^uating our programs, coming up with reliable estimates, and 

 then, in fact, putting those estimates in all of our back forecasts 

 of what conservation we acquired. 



So you might even see us saying we've got 15 megawatts in 1982 

 and three years later, it will look like ten megawatts because we 

 got a lot smarter in that two-year period about what we actually 

 acquired. So we're consistently updating as we go. 



I m not as famiUar as I should be about the details of this latest 

 evaluation we've done and I really would appreciate the chance to 

 respond in writing, as well. 



[The information follows:] 



Bonneville is the only entity in the country that has operated and consistently 

 evaluated a residential conservation program over a ten year period. High profes- 

 sional standards of methodological rigor have been appliea in evaluating and utiUz- 

 ing program results. Since the Residential Weatherization Program began in 1980, 

 and successive first year program savings results have become available, they have 

 been used consistently to modify our program and planning estimates. 



Our planning estimates are based not only on successive first year net kilowatt- 

 hour savings, but on persistence of savings as well. This means that all Residential 

 Weatherization program participants form 1980 to 1986 have been evaluated for a 

 minimum of three years after weatherization. The 1983 program participants have 

 been followed for a period of six years. These persistence studies have determined 

 that net savings among program participants in a particular year (cohort) do de- 

 cline, but they do not deteriorate by the 12 percent per year Mr. Esteves alleges. 

 In fact, the 1983 program participants averaged only a 20 percent decUne during 

 the full six years they were followed. The decay rate used by BPA, then, is 20 per- 

 cent and our planning estimates have been reduced accordingly. 



In addition to averaging savings between and within cohorts to produce conserv- 

 ative planning estimates, a third element, savings fi-om all buildings types, single- 

 family, multiiamily and low-income, is included and averaged. Based on these in- 

 puts, Bonneville recently adjusted its residential planning estimate to 2,500 kWh 



