West Coast Medium Commercial Market Assessment

The goals of this project are to develop market understanding of the medium commercial segment – to include the key organizational, operational and decision-making characteristics and drivers. Additionally, whole building performance, equipment and system characteristics of this segment will be identified and reported.

To enable sharing of resources and collaboration, members of the West Coast Lighting Consortium (including Southern California Edison [SCE], Pacific Gas and Electric [PG&E], BC Hydro, and San Diego Gas & Electric [SDG&E]) launched the West Coast Medium Market Assessment (also known as the “Western Commercial” project). The goal of this project was to understand the condition and energy performance of mid-size commercial buildings, the market factors affecting this customer group, and the opportunities for energy efficiency improvement within the building stock. To complete the first part of this project, each partner assessed the mid-size commercial building market within its service territory. An aggregate analysis of commercial mid-size buildings across all of the partners’ service territories will be prepared after all partners complete their studies. While the West Coast Medium Market Assessment is a multi-part collaboration between several western utilities, this report presents the analysis and findings specific to SCE. The central purpose of the Western Commercial project is to advance the understanding of energy usage in mid-size commercial buildings and specifically to explore and address the needs of the office sector with the intent to guide the development of modified or new utility programs. SCE defines the “mid-size sector” as accounts consuming between 200-499 kilowatts (kW) at peak demand. To develop an understanding of the mid-size commercial sector’s characteristics, the study segmented the 8,110 mid-size accounts according to their market characteristics, energy usage and energy-efficiency program participation. Deeper analysis focused on a sample of 488 low-rise office buildings. This sample was comprised of office buildings under six stories and between 25,000-150,000 square feet that matched to Waypoint’s proprietary Building Database. The analysis also included 21 interviews, which informed the prevalence of market barriers to energy efficiency (EE); five site visits and technical surveys of mid-size office buildings that assessed qualitative and quantitative data about the type and state of building systems; and performance analysis of the relationship between buildings and energy demand. Follow-on studies may be conducted on the other sectors, namely high-rise office, manufacturing, education, food, retail, entertainment, medical, warehouse, government and hospitality facilities.