Usage Impacts: Assessment of the impact of energy efficiency services and bill payment programs on the energy usage of participating households.
Payment Impacts: Assessment of the impact of payment programs, arrearage forgiveness, and energy efficiency services on the payments made by participating households.
Collections Cost Impacts: Assessment of the impact of usage reduction programs and bill payment programs on the collections costs associated with participating customers.
Termination Impacts: Assessment of the impact of usage reduction programs and bill payment programs on the incidence of account termination due to nonpayment for participating customers.
Impact Evaluation Activities
Data Attrition Analysis: Data attrition is often a serious problem in program evaluation research. Without careful attention to data attrition, measured results may be biased and inaccurately portray the impact of the program. APPRISE always conducts a careful analysis of the extent and causes of data attrition, presents results using various levels of data cleaning, and cautiously draws conclusions based on available data.
Weather Normalization: Variations in weather from one year to the next can often obscure the impacts of usage reduction programs. APPRISE uses sophisticated weather normalization procedures to control for the impact of the weather on energy usage when conducting usage impact analysis.
Comparison Group Utilization: In addition to weather, there are many other variables that can impact a household’s energy usage and bill payment behavior. To control for these other factors, we make use of comparison groups. We compare the change in usage or payment behavior for the treatment group to the change for the comparison group. The comparison group may be comprised of future program participants or another group of similar utility customers.
Impact Evaluation Outputs
Measurement of program impacts
Analysis of program achievements as compared to program goals
