Technical Support for 5th and 6th Regional Power Plans

Pacific Northwest

Supporting regional energy planning through decades of simulation-driven insight

Since 1982, Ecotope has partnered with the Northwest Power and Conservation Council (NPCC) to support the development of energy efficiency measures and savings estimates across multiple regional power plans. Beginning with the 1st Power Plan, Ecotope developed the first optimized residential supply curve using its SUNDAY thermal simulation tool—laying the foundation for conservation resource planning in the Northwest. Over the decades, Ecotope’s contributions have shaped both residential and commercial sector modeling, with ongoing refinements to prototypes, simulation tools, and analytical methodologies for inclusion in the Council’s 3rd through 6th Power Plans.

For the residential sector, Ecotope’s work progressed from early SUNCODE and “bin” modeling to the development and application of SEEM, culminating in over 300,000 simulations to generate performance matrices across housing prototypes, climate zones, HVAC systems, and weatherization measures. In the commercial sector, Ecotope contributed to prototype development and conservation supply curves, proposing and modeling measures such as rooftop HVAC and daylighting. Through simulation enhancements, analytical model development, and rigorous data generation, Ecotope has remained a key technical partner to NPCC in its mission to identify cost-effective, regionally appropriate energy efficiency strategies.

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• Sixth Northwest Conservation and Electric Power Plan. Northwest Power and Conservation Council, February 2010.