The CEE Water and Wastewater Committee is conducting a pilot of the ENERGY STAR benchmarking tool for municipal wastewater facilities. The benchmarking tool is available through the Portfolio Manager online tool at the ENERGY STAR web site, www.energystar.gov. Efficiency program administrators in the industrial arena met in January to hear an update on the benchmarking pilot and discuss next steps in light of the initial results.

Pilot Project Begins
Introduced in October of 2007, the ENERGY STAR benchmarking tool for wastewater is based upon statistical analysis of national survey data (AwwaRF Project 3009) and is used to rate a wastewater facility’s relative energy performance. In an effort to determine how efficiency programs might use this tool, CEE asked members of the Water and Wastewater Committee to volunteer to benchmark plants in their service territories. To date BPA, ComEd, and Wisconsin Focus on Energy have provided data on over 20 facilities in their service areas. ENERGY STAR has supported this effort to field test the benchmarking tool and has been receptive to feedback from CEE member programs. If you are interested in participating in this ongoing project, please contact CEE Program Manager Toby Ast for further details.

Throughout the benchmarking field test the CEE committee has explored the potential benefits of benchmarking to both programs and customers. The focus has been on lessons revealed by the benchmarking process, rather than the specific benchmark score that a facility receives. Piloting the tool also offered insight into the subtleties of using it, along with issues to consider before beginning the data collection process.

Data Flow Critical
As the field testing revealed, there are multiple options for entering data into Portfolio Manager: directly through the ENERGY STAR web site, e-mailing a spreadsheet template to ENERGY STAR, or working through a third-party provider. For this pilot the participating programs provided their data to CEE via the ENERGY STAR Excel spreadsheet template. After verifying the completeness of the data, ENERGY STAR facilitated the data upload into Portfolio Manager.

The question of data flow becomes critical prior to embarking on a widespread benchmarking effort. Programs should carefully consider how they will gather and monitor benchmarking data and which account structure in Portfolio Manager makes the most sense for their program. The online system is designed to be used by facility managers, but there are options for others, such as efficiency program administrators, to track the energy use for multiple facilities owned or managed by several different individuals or organizations.

In order to view data from several individual accounts, the utility registers for a Master Account. A master account allows individual facilities to share data with the master account user, a CEE member field testing the tool.

Mark Wizniak of ComEd spoke briefly at the January meeting about his experience in collecting data for the benchmark, specifically that some of the plant managers asked him why they would want to benchmark. When reaching out to plants in their service territories, programs need to consider ways to motivate participation in a benchmarking program. In January, when considering how best to encourage benchmarking, the committee discussed its value as a way to assess potential plant improvements and the usefulness of employing ENERGY STAR as a nationally recognized means for raising awareness at the municipal level.

Limitations and Opportunities
The field test demonstrated a limitation of the benchmarking tool and, perhaps, an opportunity for programs to service a neglected sector of the market. Many of the plants participating in the field test were below the minimum average daily flow requirement (0.6 million gallons per day) necessary to obtain a benchmark score (1–100). Plants below this minimum are still able to calculate energy intensity in kBtu/gallons per day, but they do not receive an actual rating. The question of designing viable programs for smaller facilities remains an open one. Their size makes them unlikely candidates for expensive audits, but their collective consumption and ubiquity in member service areas also represent a program opportunity. To this end CEE has undertaken a research project to evaluate energy conservation measures that programs have implemented in water treatment. This project could lead to a framework for prescriptive measures based on CEE members’ experience in this sector. The findings of this project will be available shortly and the committee will continue to investigate ways to encourage energy management in these facilities.

Another point of contention arose around the ENERGY STAR decision to only normalize for variables deemed to be beyond the control of the plant operator, which at this point excludes sludge handling. One of the participating facilities scored an 89 but does not currently process its sludge, which is trucked to a landfill. That same plant has recently installed equipment to dewater its sludge. This will reduce its reliance on sludge trucking but increase its energy consumption, thus reducing its benchmark score. The implications of sludge handling should be considered when evaluating a plant’s score.

Multiple Ways to Use the Tool
There are a number of ways that programs might use the benchmarking tool. One participant, WI Focus on Energy, is using it to gauge the impact of plant improvements by comparing before and after data. One plant that scored low thought they might be able to use the low score to persuade their community to fund an aeration upgrade. Programs could also use the benchmarking tool to:

• screen plants to determine which would benefit most from efficiency upgrades.
• determine plants that employ sound energy management policies.
• communicate with ENERGY STAR about refinements or augmentations that they would like to see.

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