Guide for Determining Energy Savings from Changes in Operations, Behavior, and Maintenance Procedures

This Guide is intended to provide energy savings estimation methodologies for energy performance improvement actions resulting from changes in operations, behavior and maintenance procedures. These improvements are often referred to as "non-capital measures" because such improvements are typically achievable with little or no capital expenditures. This Guide is designed to assist industrial facilities in quantifying and documenting the energy savings resulting from these types of improvements, including the collection of essential data.

This Guide was developed for use by facilities that are participating in a Strategic Energy Management (SEM) program that use a well-defined whole facility approach to measurement and verification, such as the Superior Energy Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol (SEP M&V Protocol) to determine their "top down" energy performance improvement level (e.g., 6.3% over three years), using energy consumption data from metered sources. The Guide is designed to assist these facilities in calculating a "bottom-up" comparison to support their top-down claims.

Three categories of improvements are addressed in this Guide, operational, behavior, and maintenance procedures. The focus of the Guide is to assist users in recognizing the nature of the improvement and to select an appropriate method for determining the energy savings. Examples are provided to demonstrate the general principles, which are supplemented with selected detailed examples and additional resources. The principles outlined in this Guide may also be applicable for certain types of capital projects.

Users should be aware that the general methods provided here are for guidance purposes only. SEM program participants should check on the specific requirements of the SEM program in which they are participating to ensure that the required M&V rigor is being met. Use of this Guide should not be construed as either approval of the methodology chosen or the determined energy savings for purposes of SEP certification. Each unique application will be subject to engineering judgement of the SEM audit team or SEP performance verifier on the SEP audit team.