Comparison Groups for the Coronavirus Era

Final Webinar on Project Findings

Traditional baselines need to be adjusted to take into account the effects of quarantine.

Final Report and Findings

Methods and Testings Results for Commercial and Residential Comparison Groups

What now?

Major disruptions in energy consumption from the COVID-19 pandemic have created an immediate need for actionable information on customer energy usage patterns. But the dramatic, wholesale disruption of energy consumption in recent weeks has rendered existing tools inadequate. 

Formation and tracking of optimal comparison groups are the core tools needed to meet this challenge. Comparison groups are composed of similar customers to those in question and can make possible an accurate analysis of and accounting for the effects of “shelter in place orders,” job losses, and other effects of this crisis.

Why Comparison Groups?

Because COVID has led to non-routine changes in energy use in virtually every building in the world; because the recovery from COVID will take months, if not years - our only choice is to track changing patterns of consumption in the population and apply those trends to our treated customers

In order to cope with the impact of COVID, ex-post analysis using assumptions that are no longer reliable must be replaced by transparent, real-time analytics. These measurements must be informed by observational data, rather than building models, and the systems necessary to utilize such data must be secure and protect customer privacy.

---

Project Principles

• Data that is used must be accessible to all parties to the transaction and generally available across all transactions
• Methods must be specified in such a way that they can be reasonably implemented in code and verified by third parties
• Where possible, methodological debates and questions are settled through empirical testing and analysis, the results of which should be published, if possible
• Open Source, by default