M&V Plan for Residential Project

We have explored the possibility of doing so on a couple residential projects. The complexity involved in gathering the necessary data is far higher with these types of projects and as a result each time we explored it it was abandoned as too difficult and expensive. If you do pursue it I would suggest that perhaps you consider a sampling protocol for the units to keep the cost down.

Getting the electric bills for some or all of the tenant spaces could be helpful but this is just a small part of the information you will need. Having the units sub-metered for electricity would be a good check against energy end use data you will need to gather from at least a sampling of units. If the units are sub-metered and the utility does not read them then you may need to read them yourself. Who owns the sub-meters? As I said these projects are very difficult to properly implement M&V. In order to do this correctly you need to gather energy usage data for each energy end use, not just by fuel type. So lighting, heating, cooling, fans, plug loads, etc. This data can be gathered through building sub-meters installed by the owner or through a combination of short term trend meters and spot measurements. Sub-metering costs upfront but saves on labor during implementation. Gathering the data by hand (trend meters/spot measurements) is cheaper upfront but prohibitively expensive in all but relatively small buildings. Just so your owner is aware, the metering and implementation cost to do this right for even a medium-size residential project could easily be $50,000 to $100,000. This is why most projects take the easy Option 3 point and run away from the M&V Plan. How many units and what is the square footage of your project?