Bonneville Power Administration

Residential and Commercial Market Opportunities

Overview

The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) is a nonprofit, federal power marketing administration based in the Pacific Northwest. BPA – a self-funded entity under the U.S. Department of Energy – markets wholesale electrical power from 31 federal hydroelectric projects in the Northwest, one nonfederal nuclear plant, and several small nonfederal power plants.

The Solution

Facing increasing energy savings targets and limitations on its traditional sources of savings, BPA tasked D+R International to explore new and expanded market opportunities for its residential and commercial energy efficiency programs in 2013. The research scope included new measures, new applications of existing measures, new delivery models and market actors, and market and technical barriers. Research activities pulled information from a wide range of sources, with particular focus on the needs of public power utilities.

The Impact

In support of this project, D+R interviewed 85 local and national energy efficiency experts, utility staff, program implementers, and trade allies about new program opportunities; conducted a comprehensive literature review of more than 150 documents on existing and new opportunities, broken out into program components such as measures, delivery models, audiences and market actors; held two facilitated workshops with 40 in-region utility customers and BPA staff; and prepared and launched a regional survey with utility customers to prioritize potential offerings.

The study’s key findings include:

• Regional collaboration, communication, and consistency drive program success
• Sufficient resources, marketing and training are necessary for reaching wider audiences, especially underserved markets
• Regional and local nuances among BPA’s customers will require a variety of approaches to ensure buy in

The final report presented BPA with the comprehensive results of the study and prioritized recommendations on offerings for additional in-depth analysis. The report is available to review here:

https://www.bpa.gov/EE/Utility/research-archive/Documents/BPA_Market_Opportunities.pdf