P6-6. Impact Assessment Framework

• The assessment framework developed for the commercial building sector is composed of four components 1) Product Characterization, 2) Market Segmentation, 3) Market Penetration, and 4) Analysis of Impacts. Figure 7 depicts the simplified view of the processes within the assessment framework.
  
• Product Characterization provides detailed information about cost and performance characteristics, as well as a set of requirements necessary for the product to be sold and applied. The product characteristics can be grouped into the following major categories:
  
  • Requirements for defining the applicability of the product and its market segment (niche)
  • Cost and performance characteristics that describe improvement over existing or standard technologies.
    
  The set of requirements reduces the applicability of the product to a specific market segment.
  
• Market Segmentation involves identifying and characterizing the size of this market segment. It is defined as the theoretical bound on the size of the market that a product could capture.
  
• Market Penetration provides projected rates of adoption of a product in the applicable market segment.
  
• The Impact Analysis process uses the market penetration projection and the technical-improvement characteristics of a product to estimate the impacts in terms of electricity savings, reduction in peak electric power demand, and savings on energy expenditures.

• The framework was exercised in a pair of examples to illustrate some of its behavior and to demonstrate how Commission staff may use the framework in the future. The example products were chosen from two key research areas of the Program, automated diagnostics and advanced controls for commercial HVAC systems. A set of products that could be retrofitted to existing HVAC systems were chosen to illustrate the impact assessment process for this category of energy efficiency products. To contrast the use of the framework for retrofitable products, the assessment process was demonstrated for new products that can be used in new equipment that is installed in new construction or as replacements for existing equipment.

The Impact Assessment Framework will provide a platform on which research concepts and emerging technologies can be compared objectively. Using this process will allow the Energy Commission and its contractors to make better informed decisions regarding funding of project concepts. As with any modeling and analysis framework, careful application of the tools and approaches remains the responsibility of the analyst using the framework. Because most assumptions are made apparent in this process, the users of the assessment framework can check and validate projection assumptions, data, calculations, and impact estimates for agreement with citable sources, industry experience, and analytical intuition.