EECBG Benefits Calculator Overview Webcast Presentation (Text Version)
Below is a text version of the June 18, 2009 EECBG Benefits Calculator Overview Webcast. The purpose of this webinar is to introduce and give instructions on how to use the recently posted "Estimated Expected Benefits Calculator" for the EECBG Formula Grant Application. Speakers were Johanna Zetterberg, Rebecca Garland, and Charles Hemmeline.
First Slide: Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program
Johanna Zetterberg:
Hi, everyone. We're going to go ahead and get started. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Johanna Zetterberg. I'm with the office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy here at the Department of Energy. We're very pleased to have you with us. Some of you are joining still as I speak. Today's Webinar is about the Estimated Expected Benefits Calculator for the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program. And specifically we're going to walk you through how to use the calculator. It's very easy and simple.
Just a reminder that this calculator is for use by direct grantees under the formula portion of the program today.
A little bit of housekeeping. If you have questions that come up during the Webinar, please go ahead and type them into the Q&A box, which is in the lower right-hand corner of your screen. We will answer some questions at the end of the presentation today, but you can go ahead and put those in anytime throughout the presentation.
Without further ado, I'm going to turn the presentation right now to Rebecca Garland. She developed the calculator with her team, and she will present to you everything you need to know.
Next Slide: Outline
Rebecca Garland:
Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. This is Rebecca Garland and I'm an analyst here at the U.S. Department of Energy and our team helped to develop the calculator we'll be showing today.
So just I wanted to start with a brief outline. The purpose of this webinar is to introduce and give instructions on how to use this Estimated Expected Benefits Calculator. You can see at the bottom of the slide the Web site, the link to get to the calculator. On that site is also a user's guide. And a lot of the information that I will cover today, and even some more information, is at this site.
And also one thing to note for the slides today, they are quite wordy, and that's mostly just to get all the information out there so that if anyone of you want to come back to the presentation you'll be able to follow it without me talking through.
So let's talk, first I was going to do some background information into the calculator, just a little bit of information on how we developed it, and then go through a couple different examples, with examples with energy efficiency retrofits, and then financial incentives, where we'll get into the correct way to input your budget into the calculator, and then also development and implementation of transportation programs. And hopefully after that we'll have plenty of time for question and answers.
Next Slide: Project Activity Sheet
Rebecca Garland:
So I just wanted to start showing the reason that we developed this calculator is because, as you all are aware I'm very sure, you have to fill out a Project Activity Sheet as an application for the EECBG formula grant. And so I've highlighted in red here the areas in the activity sheet that we'll be talking about today. The calculator will help to fill in the areas in red, and I'm not going to go over any of the other parts of the Project Activity Sheet; only the expected benefit.
And one thing to note on this slide, and I will say it again, is that the calculator does not distinguish between jobs created and jobs retained; it an only calculate jobs. And so if you use the calculator, please just enter the number into the "jobs created". And for all of your examples you'll see that as we go on.
Next Slide: Purpose of this Calculator
Rebecca Garland:So the reason that we helped to develop this calculator is to provide some uniform guidance on calculating these expected benefits that you would put on your application. There were at the beginning some questions of how exactly to - from applicants on how exactly to estimate benefits, and so we wanted to make a calculator that would ensure accountability that people weren't just maybe guessing what the numbers are, but actually thinking through and actually coming up with some rough order of magnitude numbers. I'll probably say this many times as well; the calculator does produce very rough order of magnitude, rule of thumb numbers only.
The calculator also will ensure uniformity of the application for the estimated expected benefits. And again, this is only for our applications. And then also we wanted it to be very simple and straightforward from applicants. These instructions on this calculator are only for the application. So the reporting will begin after the project begins, and those will have - that will be - those will not use the application - the calculator, sorry. The purpose of the proposed benefits on the application is for strategic planning purposes, trying to have people think of which activities for their community really would be the most beneficial. And one thing to note, please; if an applicant believes that it has an accurate methodology for calculating expected benefits, that they may use their own methodology. These are national averages that we use for the calculator rule of thumb, and the categories on EECBG have a large range of activities within each category. So if you know exactly what you are going to be doing and if you have a methodology to calculate your expected benefits, please do feel free to use that.
One thing to note, that if an estimated expected benefit on application are outside the expected range, applicants may be contacted for clarification of the methodologies by the reviewers, just in order to clarify exactly what the methodology was, perhaps.
Next Slide: "Estimated Expected Benefits" Versus "Realized Benefits"
Rebecca Garland:
I wanted to clarify another point of what estimated expected benefits on this application and what this calculator is for versus what we're calling "realized benefits" right now, from the reporting that you will do once the project actually starts and is implemented. As I said a few times, the provided calculator is only for the application and it does the estimated expected benefits. After the project begins, then all the participants in the project will begin to report on the real-life benefits, and by that I mean, for example, the actual energy you saved due to this project, which you'll be able to calculate for your specific project, not just the rule of thumb we're talking about today. And it's these reported realized benefits that are really going to be the important numbers to determine the project's impact.
The ones that we're talking about today, the estimated expected benefits, are only for application, only to give you an idea of what order of magnitude what type of savings you might expect. And also, applicants will not be penalized if their estimated expected benefits differ from these realized benefits due to the limitations of the calculator. We realize that these are rule-of-thumb numbers, and so we won't penalize an applicant if the realized benefits are different.
Next Slide: General Methodology for Creating Calculator
Rebecca Garland:
So I need to go over just very quickly the general methodology we used for creating the calculator. That also might help you to see where some of the limitations are, and so if you get numbers that might be different when you get the realized benefits may be some reasons for that, of why the calculator couldn't capture your expected benefits _______ yet.
So for energy savings what the goal was for this calculator was to develop a simple multiplier for each of the _______ eligible activity categories, and that was energy saved divided by program dollars spent. So just for every dollar you spend, how much energy could you expect to save? The sources for these multipliers were two different sources; one was an Oak Ridge National Lab study of the State Energy Program activities. And the State Energy Program activities, while they are different from the EECBG activities, do have some overlap. And through that study of the SEP, the State Energy Program, we did cover 6 of the 14 eligible activities in the EECBG.
We also used some internal EERE numbers for the Energy Distribution category. We used information from a Combined Heat and Power report. And I don't have cites to the reports on the slides, but if you go onto the Web site and into the user's guide the links to all of this information are there.
There are two exceptions where we felt that we could actually do better than just a multiplier because people would be generating electricity, and so we'd be able to calculate how much energy savings they would have. And so the renewable energy on federal buildings - we actually just assumed that the renewable energy that one, that a participant would generate would equal the energy that they would save or like the convention energy they would save. And so for these you would have to know what kilowatts or megawatts that you were putting, what the capacity you might assume.
And also the Capture of Methane category. We assumed that the methane that was captured would be used to generate energy. So if you are doing one of these projects and you will not be generating energy that way, that's one thing to note. And this is also in the user's guide, of what exactly that means.
There were also, unfortunately, five activities where we cannot quickly develop a relevant multiplier for either this energy savings or the greenhouse gas emission reductions, and they're blacked out in the calculator. And we'll get into that in example three. I've listed the five here: development of an EE conservation strategy; the conservation program for buildings and facilities; transportation program, which will actually be our example three; material conservation programs; and obviously other.
Next Slide: General Methodology for Creating Calculator (continued)
Rebecca Garland:
So the greenhouse gas emission reductions may assumes that the energy saved equals electricity saved. And then we just converted the kilowatt hours saved to CO2 reductions using an emission coefficient depending by state. And for this calculator you'll see you have to enter the state or the territory of where you are. And there's more information on this in the user's guide. I won't go through it in detail right now. And the bullet under that, for the capture of methane, when we did the greenhouse gas emission calculator we accounted for the energy saved, as I said before, but also we accounted for the amount of CH4 captured, and also, since we are assuming that the methane is being combusted or is being used to generate electricity, also the CO2 released in combustion.
For jobs we used the guidance from the Council of Economic Advisors, which was a simple multiplier across all the categories of $92,000.00 per job. And as I said earlier when I showed off the Project Activity Sheet, this calculator cannot distinguish between jobs created and jobs retained, so on the Project Activity Sheet you only enter the calculator output into proposed jobs created.
Next Slide: Caveats and Brief Explanation for "Estimated Expected Energy Saved"
Rebecca Garland:
This here, this slide, the Caveats and Brief Explanation of the "Estimated Expected Energy Saved," a lot of the information is from the user's guide. I'm not going to go into great detail with this here, but this will be here later if people have questions on some of the assumptions that go into the calculator. The very important one is the very top bullet, that these multipliers that we use for the expected energy save are national averages, and the realized benefits will differ.
Next Slide: Calculator Inputs
Rebecca Garland:
So now let's get into what we actually put into the calculator. So the calculator inputs, the first one that we need - we'll input is the budget. And it's very important that we have accuracy in the accounting to use these multipliers, the energy save multipliers correctly. And so we need to correct the account for the money that is coming from EECBG funds and also leveraged funds. The definition below the bullet is from the online instructions, and an example too later in this presentation will go through this definition in detail and see how it applies.
So after inputting the budget, if we plan - if an applicant plans to do a renewable energy project they need to put in how much renewable energy capacity they plan to install, and if the methane - they're trying to do a methane capture project, the cubic feet of methane they plant to capture. And those are all of the inputs that's necessary for the calculator.
Next Slide: Calculator Snapshot
Rebecca Garland:
This is a screenshot or a snapshot of the calculator with the - [sneezes] excuse me - with the URL right below it, the link. You can see a couple different things, even though you probably can't actually read the calculator, but we'll zoom in on it. All the green is where the applicant would enter information. The white cells the calculator fills in themselves. And then these blacked out cells are the cells where you won't be getting any information out.
Next Slide: Example 1: Energy Efficiency Retrofits
Rebecca Garland:
So let's go through a couple different examples. The situations that I've come up with are just merely for illustration purposes. Hopefully they'll help us work - create a calculator.
So the first one, Energy Efficiency Retrofits. The situation is a tribe with a majority of its population in Arizona plans to use $200,000.00 to conduct energy efficient retrofits of low income housing. For the first step, circled in red in the calculator is to select the primary geographic location, Arizona, from a dropdown list in column one. That is the ______ for the correct calculation of the greenhouse gas emission reductions you would expect.
Next Slide: Example 1: Energy Efficient Retrofits (continued)
Rebecca Garland:
Step two, we would enter the budget, the $200,000.00 into column two, which is called the "Proposed EECBG Budget". After we put it into the green cell you can see the white cells become populated, and where the blue circle is on the bottom right-hand corner are the expected benefits. The first column, number seven, is annual estimated expected energy savings in kilowatt hours. That's $300,000.00-odd, almost $400,000.00.
And then the next one is the annual expected reduction in emissions. That's 214 metric tons of CO2 equivalent. And the next one is the annual estimated expected jobs created and/or retained, and that's two.
You'll put these numbers into the Project Activity Sheet, and it's also optional, if you would like you can attach an Excel copy of your calculator to the application. In FedConnect there is a category for other attachments; you can put an Excel copy there if you would like to, to aid the reviewer.
Next Slide: Example 1: Energy Efficiency Retrofits, Project Activity Sheet
Rebecca Garland:
So here is a Project Activity Sheet for the situation. I've only entered information for the expected benefits; I didn't fill in the rest of the Project Activity Sheet. By now I'm sure everybody is masters at that, so I'm only going to concentrate on the area we're talking about.
So we're showing information from the columns seven to nine in the calculator, and we used the units and energy saved from the calculator, which is kilowatt hours. Unfortunately, in the .PDF form, when I tried you couldn't put in letters for greenhouse gas emissions reduced, so you can just write the number that's in the calculator there
.Next Slide: Example 2: Financial Incentives
Rebecca Garland:
All right, moving on to example two, the category is financial incentives. The situation here is a county in Missouri plans to use $100,000.00 of their EECBG funds to start a revolving loan. The local utility has agreed to add $1 million to this loan fund. That's the situation. So we start in the exact same place as last time; first we select the primary geographic location from the dropdown list in column one, and that's where the red circle is. We then enter $100,000.00 in column two, which is the pink circle. So the exact same two spots as last time. [Coughs] excuse me.
Next Slide: Example 2: Financial Incentives, "Proposed Funds Leveraged"
Rebecca Garland:
However, this time we have this $1 million that the utility has also agreed to add to the loan fund, and so we need to determine if for this calculator purposes we should put it into the proposed fund's leverage. So from the online instructions we can read in the italics, "For each individual Project Activity Sheet, input the proposed funds leveraged into column three. Each leveraged dollar must be counted only once and assigned to only one eligible activity."
So in order to determine if the $1 million can be entered as proposed funds leveraged in the calculator we look at these next two bullets, and these are in the user's guide as well. The first one, "Additional funds for EECBG are not considered ‘Proposed Funds Leveraged' if the EECBG funds are used to supplement a partner's pre-existing and ongoing activities. In this case, the estimated expected benefits would be based upon the EECBG's funding only". An example of that would be if this utility already had a revolving loan fund and then the EECBG money went into it. In that case if we're using this calculator the only budget we would put in would be the money from the EECBG. However, that is not the case here.
So let's look at bullet number two. We don't fulfill bullet number one. But bullet number two is additional funds for EECBG projects are considered proposed funds leveraged if the EECBG funding for activity is the seed money or used in the early stages of the activity. That's true, because in our situation it says a county in Missouri plans to use this money to start a revolving loan fund, so we get a yes. And the EECBG funding drew in the partner's additional funds. And in this that's true as well, because we started the fund, and then the utility agreed to add the $1 million.
Next Slide: Example 2: Financial Incentives (continued)
Rebecca Garland:
For use of the calculator, this $1 million can be entered into the proposed funds leveraged in column three. So as you can see here, we enter the $1 million into column three with the light blue circle, under "Proposed Funds Leveraged". And then the estimated expected benefits will be based upon the total funding of $1.1 million. And so when we report our expected benefits into the project activity sheet we enter columns seven, eight, and nine. And again, it's optional to attach the Excel copy of this to the application if you'd like.
Next Slide: Example 2: Financial Incentives, Project Activity Sheet
Rebecca Garland:
So here's where the Project Activity Sheet would be. Again, we just transferred over columns seven, eight, and nine into the respective areas.
Next Slide: Example 3: Development and Implementation of Transportation Programs
Rebecca Garland:
And I'm moving on to the next example, example number three, "Development and Implementation of Transportation Programs". The situation here is the City of Virginia is using $150,000.00 of EECBG funds to start a program to incentivize carpooling and the use of bike lanes, as well as to begin planning for new zoning guidelines to encourage energy efficient development.
So we start out just like before, first select the primary geographic location from the dropdown list in column one, which is where the red circle. Second, we enter the EECBG budget into column two, the $150,000.00, right where the pink circle is. And then we can see that the proposed total funding, the white cell, it pops up a number.
Next Slide: Example 3: Development and Implementation of Transportation Programs (continued)
Rebecca Garland:
But if you look over, the annual estimated expected energy savings are blocked out, as are the annual estimated expected greenhouse gases. This is because this is one of the categories where we were not able to come up with a multiplier that could take - that would account for all the varied activities that you could do in the category of development and implementation of a transportation program.
So for this one, using the calculator, you could insert only the annual estimated expected jobs created and/or retained from column nine into the Project Activity Sheet.
Next Slide: Example 3: Development and Implementation of Transportation Programs, Project Activity Sheet
Rebecca Garland:
So below this Project Activity Sheet it's showing the information that you would get from the calculator, and that again is only the proposed number of jobs created. For the proposed energy saved on your Project Activity Sheet and the proposed greenhouse gas emissions reductions, you can leave them blank or you can use your own methodology to determine the benefits. Again, especially this eligible activity development and implementation of a transportation program, it had a lot of different types of activities within it, and so if you know the specific activity you're going to do you very might well have your own methodology to create the expected benefits. So if you do have that available, please feel free to use it and insert into the Project Activity Sheet.
Next Slide: Summary
Rebecca Garland:
Well, those are the three examples I wanted to give today. So in summary, the online calculator provided for applicants is to estimate expected benefits for the application only. And if an applicant has a methodology that's more appropriate for your specific project, please feel free to utilize that methodology.
The estimated expected benefits are based upon these national average, and so we realize that they are rule of thumb numbers only. The applicant's realized benefits, again, those are the actual energy that you're going to save in things like a major difference significant from these estimates, and applicants will not be penalized if the estimated expected benefits from this calculator differ from the realized benefits of their project due to the limitations that we are aware of of the calculator.
The calculator, the user's guide, which has instructions, the background of the calculator, and even more examples than we showed today can all be found at the below Web site. And with that I'd like to say thank you for listening and see if there are any questions.
Johanna Zetterberg:
Thanks, Becky. That was a very helpful overview of the calculator and how it works. I just want to remind everyone that you are muted on your phones today, so the way to ask questions is by using the Q&A box feature on your screen. That's in the lower right-hand corner. And when you type a question in there, we'll be able to read it and we can go over questions that way.
I see a couple questions coming in. I'm going to just say a couple more things and let a few of you type in some more, and then we'll start asking and answering your questions. But just a reminder of where you can find the calculator; it's on our main program Web site, which is www.EECBG - as in Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant. That's EECBG.energy.gov. Once you're on that page you can click on the solution center, and then on the left-hand side click on the application resources page. Scroll down to the bottom and there you'll find the calculator, which is just an Excel file, which you can just download and open up right on your computer. And then there's also the user guide that Becky mentioned, which provides full instructions on how to use the calculator, as well as some background information.
So sorry to sound like a broken record here, but I just want to emphasize that this calculator is provided to you to help you calculate the estimated benefits that are going to come out of the programs and projects that you do with your EECBG allocation dollars. DOE is going to provide to you a separate calculation system that is actually going to be an online system for their required reporting that you'll have to do once you have begun implementation and are starting to realize those benefits, such as the energy that you're saving.
So we'll provide guidance to you on that reporting system at a later time; that will be coming soon. But for the purposes of the application, you can use this calculator. Also, if you have an established methodology that you feel is more accurate than the calculator, please do use that. I know some of you have already scoped out the details of your projects and what the benefits will be coming out of those. You can use that information. The calculator is really provided for those of you who do not have that kind of methodology created at this point but do need to provide those estimated benefits to DOE as part of your application.
Okay, so let's now turn to some of your questions, and we'll do our best to answer them. And for this part I'm going to turn it over to Charlie Hemmeline, also from DOE. He's our webinar maestro here and Master of Ceremonies. So Charlie, please take it away.
Charlie Hemmeline:
Excellent. Thank you, Johanna and Becky for the great presentation. I'll be your question master here today.
First question comes from Jessica, "Does the unit of measure for energy saved vary by state?" She used Michigan and it was 1 million source BTU, different from the kilowatt hours shown in your examples.
Rebecca Garland:
The calculator only has one unit that it will put out, and that is in kilowatt hours. If you have your own methodology and if you report a different amount of energy saved and it's a different unit, please do include that in your project activity sheet so that the reviewer will know what units they're looking at.
Charlie Hemmeline:
So the state, when you pick a state in the dropdown it's only the - it goes to the multiplier, it doesn't change the units?
Rebecca Garland:
Correct, it doesn't change the units in the calculator.
Charlie Hemmeline:
Excellent. Next question from Sylvia, "Should funds set aside for the administration be included in the calculator?"
Rebecca Garland:
That's a very good question actually, Sylvia. The multipliers were taken for - I might have to ask the people in the room for help with this one, because the multipliers were taken from a state and ______ program review, and that, I believe the administration money is already pulled out. Is that correct?
Johanna Zetterberg:
I don't know the answer to that. I think we'll have to find out the answer and provide that to you in our FedConnect questions and answers database, which is now viewable from our Web site in the searchable database; you don't have to go through FedConnect. So let us find out the answer to your question, Sylvia. Thanks.
Rebecca Garland:
Yeah, that's a great question. Thanks.
Charlie Hemmeline:
Okay, next question, "Can the calculator be used for other DOE grant proposals other than EECBG?"
Rebecca Garland:
So I'm going to ______. Can the calculator be used for other DOE grant proposals, other than EECBG? No, it was created specifically for the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program, and that's what it should be used for. You should contact the administrators of any other Department of Energy grant program to get the details on how to estimate benefits for those programs if estimated benefits are required in an application.
And again, this would only be for the formula EECBG, not for the competitive.
Charlie Hemmeline:
Good deal. Thank you.
A question from Barbara, "Is there a specific part of the calculator that will generate information for LED streetlamp exchanges?"
Rebecca Garland:
Yeah, the category where that was under when we developed the calculator was the traffic signals and street lighting, I believe. That would be for the LED streetlamp exchange.
Charlie Hemmeline:
Great. Thank you. A question from Delaware County, "Are greenhouse gas savings per year or over the life of the project?" They're working on a transportation program which has a goal of reducing 100 single-occupancy vehicle trips. "Should we estimate greenhouse gas reduced per day or year?" Thought being that the lifetime calculations are impossible with this kind of program.
Rebecca Garland:
Right. That's a good question. The calculator is actually annual for all of them; annual energy saved, annual greenhouse gases, and then one job - and then job years. The thought is if you invested this money all at once in one year, what would be the benefits of that year.
Charlie Hemmeline:
Great. Question from Renee, "On the estimated energy savings multiplier sheet, what about the other Excel sheet with calculator data info? These are used to calculate million source BTUs saved with technology, when, etc."
Rebecca Garland:
So this other Excel sheet that Renee is talking about, there is actually all the background information that went into the calculator. So to calculate the million source BTUs saved and such, what actually happened was that the report from the State Energy Program, where we created the multipliers from, they reported the data in million source BTUs and then we converted them into kilowatt hours. And so that's why perhaps there might be some confusion with the units. If you look at the background information it is in million source BTUs; however, in the calculator I triple-million times checked this, but I hope it's right. No, I'm joking. I did; I checked it a lot. It's in kilowatt hours saved. And so all that you're looking at, Renee, is all the background and the nitty gritty details of our calculator.
Charlie Hemmeline:
Great. Thank you for that clarification. Question here from Matthew, "Do you use the calculator with EECGB activity three, which is the energy audits activity, if you do not know exactly what the audit will report?"
Rebecca Garland:
Yes, you can. And again, this is one of those where you can see the limitations of this calculator coming to light, is that we do assume certain things with audits, and these go in - this goes into a little detail in the user's guide. But you can use it as a general rule of thumb for your energy audit, just that you be aware that depending what the audit shows and depending also what you implement, these numbers may differ - the expected numbers may differ from your realized benefit.
Charlie Hemmeline:
Excellent. We are churning through these questions. So much so that I think we've gotten all of the ones that have been submitted so far relative to the calculator itself. Oh, still coming in, very good.
A question from Gary, "If we are installing 22 LED overhead streetlights in six different locations, do we have to do an activity worksheet on each location?"
Johanna Zetterberg:
Gary, I'll answer that one; this is Johanna. No, you don't, and I bet you're happy to hear that. Please just do an activity sheet for the entire project or program, which would be installing all of those overhead streetlights in whatever locations are under the umbrella of that same project.
Charlie Hemmeline:
Great. Thank you. That definitely simplifies matters. Question here from Justin, "Will the applicant be penalized if he chooses to submit the lower greenhouse gas savings realized through its own methodology, rather than the far higher greenhouse gas savings found through the calculator?"
Rebecca Garland:
This is Becky again. No, the applicant will not be penalized. The reporting of - not the reporting. Sorry. The application and inserting the expected estimated benefits is only to be the rule of thumb around what you might expect to see. So you will not be graded at all upon these amount of savings. So please, if you feel your methodology is more accurate than the calculator, feel free to insert that into the Project Activity Sheet.
Charlie Hemmeline:
Excellent. Good to know we're going for the right answer here; I like that. More so than the highest number we can possibly get.
Rebecca Garland:
Yeah, exactly.
Charlie Hemmeline:
That comes later. Question here from Ann, "Do municipal EECGB grant applicants need to use the calculator?"
Rebecca Garland:
No, Ann, you're not required to use the calculator. You are required to provide us estimated benefits however on that Project Activity Sheet. If you have a more accurate method that you have developed and established in your municipality, please use that if it is more accurate. However, in the absence of such a methodology, we are providing the calculator to you so that you can provide us those estimates.
Charlie Hemmeline:
Great. Thank you. Thank you too, Christa, for the high-five on the Webinar. I appreciate the positive feedback.
Question here from Tracy, "Which info is input into the calculator for a geothermal heat pump cooling system replacement?
Rebecca Garland:
Would that be under - I'm not sure actually which category that would be under. Is that under energy distribution?J
Johanna Zetterberg:
That would probably be under renewable energy.
Rebecca Garland:
Renewable energy.
Johanna Zetterberg:
Only if it's on a government building.
Rebecca Garland:
If that's on the renewable energy system for a government, the only thing we have provided there is you can insert your budget and you can insert I believe it was megawatts of capacity. Yes, that's we have for the calculator that one can insert.
Charlie Hemmeline:
Okay. Thank you. A question here from Beth, I think it may be the same issue as before, "The expected energy savings on the spreadsheet I downloaded is in million BTUs saved. Is there a problem?"
Rebecca Garland:
Yeah, I think maybe we have - I think we have - I don't think; I know, we have two different spreadsheets. One is the actual calculator, which we showed a screenshot of with the green, white, and blue, where you can input numbers and some numbers will come out. And then the second one, for the people who want to get into the nitty-gritty details of the calculator, that have the multipliers, and the multipliers are actually in million BTUs saved per dollars spent, and that's simply because in the report from Oak Ridge those were the units, and we kept them and then converted at the end. So there isn't a problem; just make sure that when you use the calculator that it looks exactly as it did in this webinar, with all of the categories aligned for your budget that are in green, where you can enter information, and then it spits out the numbers in the columns seven through nine of the expected benefits.
Johanna Zetterberg:
And, Becky, I believe the calculator is the tab - the tab worksheet within the workbook that is on the left-hand side of the bottom, that says "calculator" on the tab. And like Becky just said, look for that spreadsheet that is made up of green, white, and black cells and looks just like what was shown in the slides that Becky presented earlier.
Rebecca Garland:
Sorry for the confusion on that one. The additional worksheet was just, you know, given for all the data geeks out there who want to know about the guts of the calculator.
Charlie Hemmeline:
Let's see, next question. Another question from Matthew, and I'm not sure I'm reading this right, "Will the calculator work with server visualization conversations" or vitalization conversions. Maybe server farms? So upgrades and equipment?
Rebecca Garland:
Which activity would that be under?
Johanna Zetterberg:
Maybe, Matthew, if you could just write in again and clarify what your question is, then we should be able to answer it. Thank you.
Charlie Hemmeline:
Another question here from Gary on his 22 LED and six location project. It asks, "For the addresses, can we list all the different intersections on the one activity sheet, or should we just list the City Hall's address?"
Rebecca Garland:
I'm not sure which address you're referring to that it asks for. It should - we should not be asking you for the address of the project that you're doing.
[Inaudible]
Rebecca Garland:
Yeah, why don't you just go ahead and list the information that you do have for that? Thanks, Gary.
Charlie Hemmeline:
Great. Thank you. I've got a couple questions here on this million source BTU question. I wonder if we need to go back and look at what's on the Web site and make sure it's okay.
Rebecca Garland:
Yeah, we'll double-check that. Like I said, ____ at the end, after we did the calculations, so worst-case scenario is the wrong one got put up - the wrong version got put up. But we'll double-check and make sure that it's right. But the correct one will have the kilowatt hours per year.
Charlie Hemmeline:
Okay. And just - a question from Andrea, "We may have covered this, but I wasn't sure, energy audits do not require reporting on energy saved or emission reductions on the activity sheet?"
Rebecca Garland:
For the application, the energy audits, we can actually do the calculation in the calculator. So you would be able to have the expected energy saved and the expected emission reductions on your Project Activity Sheet.
Charlie Hemmeline:
Thank you. Getting a clarification here from Matthew, "We are converting nine physical server machines to two virtualized servers. This would be submitted as a retrofit. Can the calculator be used to determine the energy savings?"
Rebecca Garland:
If you are putting - if on your Project Activity Sheet you are using - you are putting in the calculator as retrofits, then yes, using the calculator you would use the energy efficiency retrofits. However, once again, we can see how this is not something that was in the State Energy Program, so this is not one of the activities that would have gone into the calculation of the multiplier, so if perhaps you could have your own methodology to estimate your expected energy savings it might be - it most likely will be much more accurate than the calculator. However, the calculator would give you, again, a rough order of magnitude that you might expect from this.
Charlie Hemmeline:
Great. Any final questions? I think we've gotten to all of the specific calculator questions that have been submitted here.
I'll go ahead and say for those who have programmatic questions about eligible activities and the process for applying, if you haven't already seen the FAQs that are on the Web site as well as the FedConnect searchable database, those are very good sources, as well as our past webinars that we've held on the application process on planning and strategy development. There are additional slides on the webcast page where you registered for this webcast, are slides that take you through the details of applying and really detailed on the various project categories and eligible activities. So if you have kind of programming questions about the EECBG program that would be a good place to look.
So we are - oh, thank you to everyone for giving some very nice, helpful comments, some kudos from the audience; we appreciate that. Since we've got you all muted we can't hear a round of applause or anything for Becky, but we'll presume that there is one. So I'll give another ten seconds for any final submitted questions. And it looks like we have answered everything pretty well. Rock on.
Well thank you very much to you, Becky and Johanna, for your ______ and excellent work on the calculator and the presentation. These slides will be available online pretty soon. Please look on the EECBG Web site, and for all the other information that we talked about. Thanks very much. Have a great day.