|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
CIP
- Minnesota Session Laws 2007 - Chapter 136.
MMUA Model Safety, Reliability and Service
Standards
|
|
|
Energy Efficiency and Renewables
Information Among
his duties as MMUA Director of Energy Services, Jagusch will serve as an
additional liaison for municipal electric and gas utilities to state
government; educate municipal utilities on energy efficiency requirements and
related issues; and assist municipal utilities in compliance and development
of effective energy efficiency programs. Jagusch
recently represented municipal utilities on the Minnesota Climate Change
Action Group and the Midwest Governor’s Association climate change task
force. Jagusch
was formerly the Director of Public Utilities in Mora. Prior
to beginning his career with municipal utilities, Jagusch served in the U.S.
Navy from 1980 to 2001. He held numerous positions during his Navy career,
and was a Qualified Submarine Warfare Officer, a Qualified Surface Warfare
Officer, a Certified Reactor Plant Engineering Officer, a Certified Radiation
Safety Officer and a Nuclear Engineering Officer. “We
are pleased and excited to have a person of Bob’s caliber join the MMUA
team,” said MMUA Executive Director Jack Kegel. “Bob has the experience,
technical skills, and leadership ability to help our public power systems
develop and implement first rate energy efficiency and conservation
programs.” Jagusch’s work promises to save millions of dollars Little legislative ground has been fought
over more in the last 18 years than Minnesota’s energy Conservation
Improvement Program (CIP). From a 1991 law which required electric
utility spending of one percent of gross annual revenues to today’s aggressive
energy savings requirement, municipal utilities have often struggled to reach
the ever-changing and increasingly stringent mandate. In 2007, after being outgunned for years
in an increasingly significant legislative and regulatory arms race, MMUA
hired Bob Jagusch, formerly manager of Mora Municipal Utilities. Along with
utility experience, Jagusch brought to the job a bachelor’s degree in
mechanical engineering and a master’s in nuclear engineering and over 20
years of experience in the U.S. Navy. One immediate difficulty was trying to
determine which hole in the dike needed plugging first. An obvious area of
involvement came in the state’s effort to develop an energy “deemed savings
database.” MMUA’s efforts to correct mistakes in this
database “promise to save municipal utility customers millions of dollars
each year,” said MMUA Executive Director Jack Kegel. How is that? Like most government programs, CIP
requires reporting. Only this reporting is especially complicated—various
utilities around the state were using their own calculations on expected
energy savings from various conservation projects. A number of states have developed
databases, to organize measures for evaluation purposes. New York, for
instance, tracks 457 energy efficiency measures and assigns ‘deemed values’
for kWh, kW (summer peak), MMBtu and water savings to each one. New York also
quantifies the expected life of various efficiency measures and assigns
incremental cost values. Energy savings assumptions are based on this data In Minnesota, policymakers, regulators and
utilities all agreed the CIP reporting process would be simplified by
development of the deemed savings database. In calculating energy savings for
future reporting, all utilities will be required to use this database, which
would bring order to formerly conflicting and uneven savings values
attributed to identical measures. Regulators in the Minnesota Office of
Energy Security want the database to support utility program evaluation
reviews. Utilities want the database to support their program implementation
staff. “This was an obvious project to get
involved with,” Jagusch said. “Energy services people from the utilities
won’t have to go into these depths. This will be the data behind their
programs. We’re doing this stuff behind the scenes so they can manage their
programs locally.” All parties agree that the deemed savings
values should be integrated into program tracking databases to ensure
consistency. As with many good ideas, turning this
desire into reality has proven to be more difficult than anticipated. Minnesota’ database effort started several
years ago when the OES, as part of a regulatory docket (No. E,
G999/CIP-06-1591) convened a number of meetings to discuss the database with
stakeholders and various consultants. Eventually, the state hired a
contractor to supply a database. So far, so good, until utility
representatives, including MMUA’s Jagusch, peered into the inner workings of
the database. “Much of the data used was borrowed from
other parts of the country and would severely understate the savings
available in Minnesota, in some cases by as much as two-thirds,” said
Jagusch. This was pointed out to OES staff. “They wisely said, let’s sit down and talk
about it,” Jagusch said. Out of those discussions came the informal
appointment of about a dozen people, including Jagusch, to go through the
database topic by topic. The review process started in December. It has
proven more difficult than most people anticipated. “I really don’t know when we’ll be done,”
Jagusch said. “I thought we would be done with lighting by now, but there are
just more and more and more questions.” More difficult issues lie ahead. The deemed savings database deals with
gross impacts only and includes no deemed “free ridership” or market effects
factors. There has been a commitment from legislators to consider such
savings in the future, however. Inclusion of these very real but hard to
quantify savings could go a long way toward showing progress toward meeting energy
savings goals. Also, once the database is complete, plug
and play reports could be developed to simplify utility reporting
requirements. An effort to develop these reports is underway. When this day comes, and a municipal
utility keys in its program data into the state database, they will have had
a representative involved in setting the data behind the numbers. MMUA and Jagusch have already played a
part in several significant CIP victories. One allows a utility to carry
forward energy savings in excess of 1.5 percent a year to the succeeding
three calendar years. The law also now provides that savings
from electric utility infrastructure projects may be carried forward for five
years. “These savings carryover provisions can
save municipal utilities a lot of money over the years,” pointed out MMUA
Executive Director Jack Kegel. “Having a credible expert on staff that can
provide solid data in support of our arguments for change has been the real
key to our success.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||
|
|
Minnesota Municipal Utilities Association
|
|
|
|
|
|