The Bonneville Power Administration places great emphasis on exploring and testing leading edge technologies that can deliver tremendous energy savings to Pacific Northwest homeowners, farmers, businesses and industries.

Meeting the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s goal of attaining 85 percent of the region’s future load growth through energy efficiency  requires a flow of new products, services, practices and collaboration between national and regional industry leaders.

An in an effort to promote knowledge and resource sharing, BPA has developed E3TNW.org, a new online database designed to help electric utilities, researchers, technical advisory groups, manufacturers, institutions, industry leaders and BPA gauge and evaluate energy technologies.

“E3TNW.org will help the region move energy-saving technologies from the drawing board in to Northwest homes and businesses,” explains Jack Callahan, BPA mechanical engineer. “Collaboration and sharing information about research is a growing trend among leaders in the energy efficiency industry.”

BPA’s Energy Efficiency Emerging Technology Team and Washington State University’s Energy Program collaborated in the development of the database, which was unveiled at the Emerging Technology Summit 2012 in Pasadena, Calif., Oct. 15.

“Several utilities, research organizations and manufacturers were pleased to see a centralized and publically available resource. Many users commented on how helpful the site will be for their research efforts,” said David Shepherd-Gaw from WSU’s energy program.

The summit is an insider’s conference that highlights technology advancements and best practices in this fast-moving industry, including implementation approaches for energy efficiency, demand response and smart grid. Summit attendees were particularly impressed with the collaboration aspects of the site that can reduce the potential overlap of multi-organizational research.

It features a searchable, user-friendly interface that allows users to browse, search and submit information about viable technologies to help coordinate and collaborate research with regional and national experts. The site currently features nearly 400 emerging technologies across all sectors including information about potential energy savings, cost benefits, non-energy benefits, ease of adoption and technology readiness.

There was also a lot of hype around new features unveiled at the summit that included a dashboard widget, emerging tech  ratings, expert opinions and a “follow” feature to track progress of specific technologies. The positive response was so strong it even spurred an impromptu collaboration dinner between BPA, energy efficiency organizations, utilities and researchers to further discuss best practices for increased collaboration, evaluation standards and credibility so the database can realize its fullest potential.

E3TNW.org also connects to Conduit, the Northwest’s first online energy efficiency collaboration tool developed by BPA and Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance that connects energy industry professionals from Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington so they can share leanings and best practices.   (To learn more about Conduit or to create an account, visit www.conduitnw.org.)

BPA’s emerging technologies program, often referred to as E3T, is a model that’s being followed across the industry. It is a collaborative effort between BPA, Northwest publicly-owned utilities, manufacturers, researchers, universities and experts to identify promising new technologies with the greatest potential benefit to the region. BPA’s E3T program also performs quality assurance tests, subsidies for energy-efficient equipment, and incentives for manufacturers to develop better products.