As ongoing efforts to promote energy efficiency, including advocacy groups, development of codes and standards, and utility programs, continue to produce electricity savings, it is important to understand emerging technologies and trends in the industry that may impact energy efficiency. Several key technologies are expected to play a continuing role in energy efficiency while offering new opportunities for customer flexibility, including:
- Advanced heat pump technologies with enhanced low-temperature heating, expanding market potential in cold climates.
- Growing adoption of emerging electric technologies, including electric vehicles and energy storage.
- Increasing interaction between end-use technologies and the grid, including distributed generation, energy storage, and flexible load devices.
- Advancements in electronics technologies, including power electronics, batteries, power management, and communications.
Codes and standards continue to identify new areas for energy efficiency efforts, while at the same time new end-uses continue to emerge, creating new opportunities for energy savings.
Understanding end-use consumption and emerging technologies is key to this effort. Opportunities to extend and strengthen this analysis include:
- Develop a more robust set of commercial and industrial efficiency technologies
- Carry out detailed customer adoption studies to better understand market barriers
- Develop improved (updated) load shapes with data on hourly, aggregated impacts of new technologies
As the technology landscape unfolds the realm of cost-effective efficiency will continue to evolve. Ongoing stakeholder engagement may support continued refinement of the modeling approach and data inputs in this changing landscape.