Utility Resource Planning and Assessment

Cadmus’ Energy Services Group offers a complete set of strategic and analytic services to support electric, natural gas, and water utilities’ integrated resource planning efforts. Our experienced consultants work with utilities in every step of the resource planning process, beginning with formulating policy options and portfolio strategies to developing blueprints for deploying resource acquisition programs. Our utility planning and assessment services encompass:

Evaluating demand-side management resource portfolio options, including financial incentives, education and awareness campaigns, and codes and standards.
Technology assessment and feasibility studies for demand response, renewables, and fuel conversion.
Assessing long-term technical, economic, and market potentials for demand-side management options, including energy efficiency, demand response, dispersed generation, renewable resources, and fuel conversion.
Developing demand-side management resource portfolios and analyzing implications for utility customers, utilities, and communities.
Program planning services, including benchmarking and best-practice research, developing technical specifications, incentive structures, marketing plans, delivery mechanism, and cost-effectiveness analysis.
Providing support in preparation of regulatory filings and stakeholder meetings.

In recent years, Cadmus has performed a large number of comprehensive studies of demand-side management opportunities and resource acquisition plans for clients throughout the country. These include Alliant Energy, Aquila Networks, Great River Energy, Duke Power, MidAmerican Energy, PacifiCorp, Puget Sound Energy, Seattle City Light, Tacoma Power, Snohomish Public Utility District, Portland General Electric, and Chelan Public Utility District.

Our demand-side management planning and assessment services are supported by a suite of state-of-the-art techniques and advanced software tools expressly designed for analysis and forecasting of energy-efficiency and demand-response options.

Cadmus has also created a number of advanced analytic tools, including:

End Use Forecaster, a versatile tool specifically designed for estimating technical, economic, and energy-efficiency potential. This tool delivers a complete set of technical inputs, assumptions, and outputs of a technical potentials assessment in flexible and transparent MS Excel spreadsheets.
DSM Planner is designed as an MS Excel-based companion to the End Use Forecaster. It incorporates all the necessary inputs and outputs of the potential assessment results to allow utilities to dynamically perform sensitivity analyses based on alternative scenarios using key assumptions, such as market penetration, avoided costs, etc.
DSM Portfolio Pro is a flexible, Web-based model designed to organize the results of energy-efficiency technical potentials at the measure level to allow utilities to create programs based on the technical and economic characteristics of individual measures and to develop resource “portfolios.” The tool is an hourly model that builds on the California Standard Practice Manual to test measures, programs, and portfolios for cost-effectiveness from multiple perspectives.