Quarterly Meeting Recap
Harvest, OpenDSM, Additionality
OpenEAC Alliance Quarterly Meeting Summary
Meeting Overview The OpenEAC Alliance held its quarterly meeting with McGee Young (WattCarbon founder/CEO) hosting alongside co-presenter Steve Suffian (WattCarbon) and several guest speakers. The Alliance focuses on transparent, collaborative development of methodologies for measuring demand-side energy resource impacts through open-source approaches rather than gatekeeping.
New Methodology Release The Alliance published a new technical specification for "quantifying energy use and emission savings for seasonal device controls" - addressing the complex challenge of measuring savings when devices that typically run continuously are periodically turned off. This methodology is now available for public review (https://methods.openeac.org).
Harvest System Case Study Pierre Delforge from Harvest presented their grid-aware heat pump system deployed at a 72-unit low-income property in Truckee, California. The system combines heating, cooling, and hot water with thermal energy storage, enabling load shifting to optimize for both cost and grid emissions. Key results from preliminary data showed up to 50% cost reductions by shifting energy use from expensive evening peak hours to abundant midday solar periods. The project utilized multiple funding sources including utility programs, 40% federal tax credits for thermal storage, and WattCarbon EACs.
OpenDSM Methodology Updates Travis Sikes from Recurve presented major revisions to the OpenDSM (formerly OpenEE meter) methodology for whole-building energy savings calculations. The updated hourly model significantly improves solar PV predictions, reduces model overfitting, and performs 4-5 times faster than previous versions. Key improvements include better accuracy for solar customers, new sufficiency criteria using interquartile range normalization, and simplified implementation through standardized APIs.
Additionality Discussion McGee Young addressed the challenge of additionality in carbon markets - determining whether projects would have occurred without carbon incentives. He proposed two approaches for population-level additionality assessment: using published net-to-gross ratios from state energy offices as discount rates, or employing comparative load shape analysis to automatically account for naturally occurring efficiency improvements across populations.
Resources and Next Steps All methodologies and documentation are hosted transparently on GitHub with full versioning. Implementation details are available at docs.wattcarbon.com. The Alliance continues developing methodologies for demand response, batteries, fuel switching, and distributed generation. The next quarterly meeting is scheduled for November 20th, with methodology submissions open to all participants.
Slides are here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZM6pnk8SII5LGmArUHiOM86wFQQtgj-ux-4YdZT0niA/edit?usp=sharing
Recording is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O3i1UEpWPVEYPnTY3wqg89iamDu7Co-0/view?usp=sharing