Benchmark Analysis with RETScreen

—Transcript of a webinar offered by the Clean Energy Solutions Center on 16 January 2018—
For more information, see the clean energy policy trainings offered by the Solutions Center.

Webinar Panelists

Dinesh Parakh CanmetENERGY

Kevin Bourque CanmetENERGY

This Transcript Because this transcript was created using transcription software, the content it
contains might not represent precisely the audio content of the webinar. If you
have questions about the content of the transcript, please contact us or refer to
the actual webinar recording.

Katie Hello, everyone. I'm Katie Contos, and welcome to today's webinar, which
is hosted by the Clean Energy Solutions Center in partnership with
CanmetENERGY. Today's webinar is focused on the benchmark analysis
with RETScreen. Before we begin, I'll go over some of the webinar features.
For audio, you have two options.

You may either listen through your computer or over your telephone. If you
choose to listen through your computer, please select the mic and speakers
option in the audio pane. Doing so will eliminate the possibility of feedback
and echo. If you choose to dial in by phone, please select the telephone
option, and a box will display the telephone number and audio pin that you
should use to dial in. If anyone is having technical difficulties with the
webinar, you may contact the GoToWebinar's helpdesk at (888) 259-3826 for
assistance.

If you'd like to ask a question, we ask that you type the question into the
question pane. Also, the audio recording and presentations will be posted on
the Solutions Center training page within a few days of the broadcast, and
will be added to the Solutions Center YouTube channel where you'll find
other informative webinars, as well as other video interviews with thought
leaders on clean energy policy topics. Finally, one important note of mention
before we begin our presentation is that the Clean Energy Solutions Center
does not endorse or recommend specific products or services. Information
provided in this webinar is featured in the Solutions Center resource library
as one of many best practice resources reviewed and selected by technical
experts.
So, today's webinar agenda is centered around the presentations from our
guest panelists Dinesh Parakh and Kevin Bourque, who have joined us to
discuss benchmark analysis module of the RETScreen expert, a clean energy
management software system for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and
co-generation project feasibility analysis, as well as ongoing energy
performances analysis. Before we jump into the presentations, I'll provide a
quick overview of the Clean Energy Solutions Center. Then following the
panelists' presentations, we will have our question/answer session where
panelists will address questions submitted by the audience. At the end of the
webinar, you'll be automatically prompted to fill out a brief survey as well,
so, thank you in advance for taking a moment to respond.

The Solutions Center was launched in April of 2011 under the Clean Energy
Ministerial. The Clean Energy Ministerial's a high level global forum to
promote policies and programs that advance clean energy technology, to
share lessons learned and best practices, and to encourage the transition to a
global clean energy economy. 24 countries in the European commission are
members covering 90 percent of clean energy investment, and 75 percent of
global greenhouse gas emissions. The webinar is provided by the Clean
Energy Solutions Center, which focuses on helping government policy
makers design and adopt policies and programs that support the deployment
of clean energy technologies. This is accomplished through the support and
crafting in implementing policies related to energy access, no-cost expert
policy assistance, and peer to peer learning and training tools such as
this webinar.

The Clean Energy Solutions Center's co-sponsored by the governments of

Australia, Sweden, United States, with in-kind support from the government
of Chile. The Solutions Center provides several clean energy policy programs
and services, including a team of over 60 global experts that can provide
remote and in person technical assistance to governments and government
supported institutions, no-cost virtual webinars, training on a variety of clean
energy topics, partnership building with development agencies in regional
and global organizations to deliver support, and an online library containing
over 5500 clean energy policy related publications, tools, videos, and other
resources. Our primary audience is made up of energy policy makers and
analysts from governments and technical organizations in all countries, but
we also strive to engage with private sector, NGOs, and civil society. The
Solutions Center is an international initiative that works with more than 35
international partners across its suite of different programs. Several of the
partners are listed above and include research organizations like IRENA and
the IEA, and programs like SEforALL and regional focused entities such as
ECOWAS Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency.

A marquis feature the Solutions Center provides is a no-cost expert policy

assistance known as Ask an Expert. The Ask an Expert service matches
policy makers with more than 60 global experts selected as authoritative
leaders on specific clean energy finance and policy topics. For example, in
the area of energy efficiency analysis, we are very pleased to have Farah
Sheriff, project engineer at RETScreen International, serving as one of our

2
 experts. If you have a need for policy assistance in energy efficiency analysis
or any other clean energy sector, we encourage you to use this valuable
service. Again, this assistance is provided free of charge.

If you have a question for our experts, please submit it through our simple
online form at cleanenergysolutions.org/expert. We also invite you to spread
the word about this service in your networks and organizations. Now, I'd like
to provide a brief introduction for today's panelists. First up today is Dinesh
Parakh, who manages strategic partners, communications, business
development and training, and capacity building for RETScreen International
at Natural Resources CanmetENERGY. And our second speaker today is
Kevin Bourque, who is the part of the development team for the RETScreen
Clean Energy Management software. And with those brief introductions, I'd
like to welcome Dinesh to the webinar.

Dinesh Thank you, Katie. Let me get my screen on here. All right. Can you see my
screen?

Katie Yes, we can.

Dinesh Okay. Wonderful. Thanks very much. Okay. So, good morning, good
afternoon, and good evening to all of you.

Welcome to everyone from around the world and thank you for making the
effort to attend this webinar. So, as Katie mentioned, this is the latest in a
series of webinars on the RETScreen Clean Energy Management software,
provided as part of Canada's contribution to the Solutions Center’s Ask an
Expert service. I am first going to provide a brief overview of the RETScreen
software and RETScreen International. Following this, Kevin Bourque, who
is a senior engineer for RETScreen International, will be doing a live software
demonstration of the benchmark analysis module of RETScreen Expert. So,
to start, what is RETScreen?

Well, briefly put, RETScreen is the world's leading clean energy decision
making software. RETScreen can undertake benchmark, feasibility,
performance, and portfolio analyses. And, again, just to note that previous
webinars on these topics—feasibility, performance, and portfolio—are
available on the Solutions Center YouTube channel, as well as on the
RETScreen e-learning channel. The technologies covered in RETScreen
include energy efficiency, heating and cooling, power generation, and co-
generation. RETScreen handles both renewable energy as well as
conventional fuels. And RETScreen can be used for a wide variety of
facilities, including residential houses, commercial and institutional buildings,
industrial facilities, and power generation facilities.

RETScreen is also available in 36 languages, covering two-thirds of the

world's population at the click of a button. And Kevin's going to show that to
you later. RETScreen's mission is to empower cleaner energy decisions
worldwide. RETScreen has over 575,000 users in every country and territory
of the world, and this number is growing at about 50,000 new users every
year. Over 1,000 universities and colleges, that we know of, use RETScreen

3
 for teaching and research, and RETScreen has been responsible for well over
$8 billion in direct user savings since 1998.

RETScreen is developed by the government of Canada, with the contribution

of numerous partners, including Ontario's independent electricity system
operator, the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership, based in
Vienna, who are actually the funders of the original benchmark database on
which the benchmark module is based. Other partners include NASA, the
United Nations Environment Program, and the Global Environment Facility.
The next generation of the software was released in September 2016. This
new software is called RETScreen Expert, and that is what you are going to
be seeing today. And just as a quick reminder that you can download the
software free of charge from our website at www.RETScreen.net.

So, why benchmark? Why are we spending more than an hour this morning
on this topic? And why is it so important? So, again, just very briefly, energy
benchmarking helps designers, facility operators, managers, and senior
decision makers quickly gauge a facility's energy performance. So, why
benchmarking does that—it allows you to estimate the expected energy
consumption or production compared to a reference facility and get an idea of
the scope for improvements.

So, that's a quick answer to the basic "why" of benchmarking. Kevin is now
going to present the actual benchmark analysis module, which is going to
include how to establish your own benchmarks and use RETScreen's
extensive benchmark database; how to use the various tools available in the
software to establish, validate, and update your benchmark; and what is
required at each step of project analysis to keep your benchmark relevant.
What you see on your screen here is a screen shot of the home page of
RETScreen Expert, which is going to be the starting point for Kevin's
demonstration. And finally, I'll just remind you again, as had been mentioned,
that there will be a question and answer session at the end of Kevin's
presentation. If you have questions during the presentation, please feel free to
submit them through the question window, and we'll be sure to address them
at the end of the presentation.

So, with that, over to you, Kevin.

Kevin Thank you very much, Dinesh. Let me just set up my screen sharing. And
here we are, within the software itself. So, hello, everyone. My name's Kevin,
and today, I'm going to take you on a tour of the benchmark analysis in
RETScreen.

And we're going to do this together right within the software itself. So, we're
going to work with the software and demo it live to show you how to do all
sorts of different benchmark analysis in RETScreen and to keep them relevant
as your project progresses through different stages of a project. The key
message I want you to come away with today and for you to remember is that
RETScreen's benchmark analysis module is a super easy way for you to do
benchmark analysis. It's flexible, as well. It will let you integrate it with other
benchmarking tools which you may be using or that you may be mandated to

4
do, and it can also integrate well with other more detailed energy performance
monitoring projects or feasibility projects or energy auditing and those types
of things.

So, why would you want to do benchmarking with RETScreen in the first
place? Well, first of all, RETScreen lets you quickly establish the reference
climate conditions for a site anywhere on Earth. It lets you compare the
energy performance of various types of reference facilities with the estimated
or measured energy consumption of those facilities. So, either of those—
either the estimated or measured values—can also come from your
RETScreen feasibility or your RETScreen performance analysis if you want.
It also helps you to gauge a facility's energy performance, including the scope
for improvement.

So, it does this by helping you compare the expected energy consumption or
production versus reference facilities. As well, it provides you with a first
guess at the energy situation for your facility. And last, but not least, you can
leverage our extensive benchmark database which has well over 4,000
listings—and we'll take a closer look at that in a minute or two. So, I'm here
within the software on the home page, and you'll see on the right-hand side
here, I have a list of different facility types. And all the types of project listed
in this right side can have a benchmark analysis, including different types of
buildings, factories, and even power plants.

So, for example, you could do a benchmark for buildings—like schools or

hospitals or office buildings—over all different types of industrial
manufacturing. You could even do benchmarks for electricity generation. So,
for example, for a clean power production—including wind and solar energy,
affordable _____. You can do it for gas turbines, landfill gas, bio-gas, and
more. Now, this circle in the middle of the page shows the RETScreen project
analysis workflow, and it shows the different project types that you can do,
and the worksheets associated with each of those project types.

Now, you'll see in the upper right-hand quadrant that the location and facility
page are key parts of the benchmark analysis. Now, one important thing to
remember is that the location and facility page are available for all project
types in RETScreen, including any performance and feasibility analysis that
you may want to do. So, what that means is that benchmarking is
automatically a part of every RETScreen analysis that you may do. So, let's
get right into the benchmarking tool and see how you do that. So, one of the
easiest ways is here on the left-hand side.

We have different project types, and you'll see if I click on this button here
that says, "Benchmark", RETScreen will load a benchmark analysis for me—
a blank one. And the first place it brings me to is the location page. So, as I
said a couple of minutes ago, that one of the important things in
benchmarking is having referenced climate conditions for a site anywhere on
Earth. So, whether you're doing power production or analyzing buildings, it's
important to know where your project is and what conditions your project is
subject to so that you're comparing like with like. So, I'm going to show you
just briefly how to select a location.

5
Today, let's pick a project. I've clicked on the "Select Climate Data Location"
button, and I won't go into detail on how to do this; we have that in another
video. But, let's suppose that our project today—let's do an analysis in the
greater Toronto area, let's say, around Oakville, and we're going to say, pick
our projects, which are going to be, say, around here. And we can zoom in
and we can actually go to satellite mode if we want and actually select the
very precise location of our project, but suffice it to say that we're now
picking the place of our project and RETScreen will automatically pick the
best climate data location. And when I click "Okay" that data is updated on
the location page. So, you'll see here, the map has been updated.

I have some updated location information—both for the facility itself and the
climate data—and, as well as the climate data itself. So, it's important to get
the location info set up properly for the first time for any future types of
analysis you might want to do. So, if you decide to continue with RETScreen
doing either feasibility or performance analysis later on, it makes everything
easy since it's all in one place and it's already done. So, it's important to get
this right from the beginning. Choose where your project is.

So, the next thing I'm going to do is the second tab as part of the benchmark
analysis and that's the facility page. So, I'm going to click on the facility page,
and you'll see here that RETScreen automatically opens, and the first thing
we see is a power plant. And it's important to remember that the benchmark
analysis in RETScreen can be done for all sorts of facilities, including power
plant. Now, we're going to come back to power at the end, but let's start with
a facility first. So, if I click on the facility type drop down here, I see the
different types of facilities that you can you do RETScreen analysis on.

I'm going to click on the—I'll start with an industrial type, and you'll see that
the page changes. We get a new image. This data below has been updated.
And let's look at some subtypes. So, we'll see here different types of industrial
manufacturing processes, as well as their subtypes, and let's click on "Dairy"
as an example.

So, you'll see that the image is updated to show a dairy plant. This is just an
example so that you know what you're working with, and you'll notice here at
the bottom that the numbers have changed again. When we changed that, then
this graph was updated as well. Let's go through this quickly. So, notice that
we have a benchmark data available instantly.

So, all we've done is we've selected what facility type and subtype, and
RETScreen has automatically gone into its database and picked out a
benchmark for us. Notice, also, that we have the minimum typical/maximum
typical benchmarks for that. And below that, we have a base case energy use
intensity as we as a target. And the target here is set at 15 percent. And that
helps just to start the conversation and says, "Well, what would the energy
use intensity be if we were to reduce it by 15 percent?" And then, RETScreen
can calculate the proposed case.

You'll notice here that the units are in kilowatt-hours per employee, and we
have right here the units—the energy units—for this energy use intensity.

6
And if I click, you can see that you can change those units. So, we're using
kilowatt-hours, but you could have megajoules or a million btu or other units
that are of interest to you. And similarly, for the facility side, the default
benchmark is measured in kilowatt-hours per employee, but if had other
metrics that you wanted to use for your benchmark—for example, the number
of kilograms or pounds of product or even tons of dairy being produced by
this industrial application—you could do that. Let's keep it as "Employees"
since that's what the benchmark is, and let's type in a number here, and let's
say, "Well, what if this dairy facility had 125 employees?"

And as soon as I click here and press "Enter", you'll see that some values will
be calculated here at the bottom. And as soon as I do, you see here that we're
now able to calculate the base case on the plan based on this energy use
intensity for the base case. We're now able to calculate what the overall
annual fuel consumption would be for this dairy facility in the base case, and
if we reduced it by 15 percent, what the proposed base is. And RETScreen
can calculate the fuel saved. Let's actually jump into a different type of
benchmark.

I want to show you how quick and easy it is to explore benchmark. So, we
looked at an industrial facility—how about a residential project? So, if I click
on "Residential", you'll see, once again, the image updates. And look at the
different types of residential benchmarks we can explore. Let's look at—let's
say a single-family home.

So, the image updates, so we know what we're working with, and the
benchmarks, of course, have updated as well. You'll notice here that the units
have marks for this single-family home are available in kilowatt [Break in
audio] square meter. And you can, of course, change those units as well. So,
if you change these units here, RETScreen will handily convert them for you.
So, if we wanted to know what the typical energy fuel end use consumption
was for a 1600 square foot home?

We type in "1600" and just like before, RETScreen is able to now calculate
the base case and the proposed case and used fuel consumption. So,
remember before, there was 31 million kilowatt-hours, and now, it's just
under 20,000. So, we're already starting to get an idea of how much fuel
consumption and what the benchmarks are for these different—very, very
different types of facilities. You'll also see here that once again, RETScreen
has automatically put in the benchmark, and the minimum typical and
maximum typical value at 12.45 kilowatt-hours per square foot. And, as
before, if I change that into square meters, RETScreen calculates that as well.

So, that's for this home, but what do homes in general—what are different
types of benchmarks for homes? So, one thing that you may want to do is you
can consult the RETScreen benchmark database. And, if I go into the menu
here, you'll see a button that says, "Benchmark Database". And, if I click on
"Benchmark Database", the RETScreen benchmark database will open, and
you'll see here that here, we're looking at residential projects in Australia. But
we can filter this list here.

7
And we have a full benchmark database here with about over 4300 different
entries in it. So, now, we're just looking at residential projects, but we have all
those commercial projects and those industrial as well, and for all sorts of
countries all around the world and all different units. So, the way that this
benchmark database works is that it aggregates and collects different
benchmarks from around the world, and it lists them here in these rows where
we have the country—where it's from—what the benchmark value is itself,
and what unit it's in, what the category—the facility type and type of that
facility are, and lastly, the reference. So, if you want to find out where that
value comes from, you can follow this reference. The references are also
available in the bibliography in the RETScreen software, and any notes or the
source of that benchmark are available as well.

So, let's look at residential benchmarks. So, you see here that we now have—
I've used this filter by clicking on this button here and only selecting
"Residential" and so now, we're only looking at residential benchmarks.
And you see, there's many, many, many of them. So, we've picked Oakville,
Ontario, and Canada. What if we only looked at Canadian benchmarks
for this?

So, now, if I click on "Canada", now my benchmark database is only showing

me residential benchmarks in Canada. And you'll see that the units are quite
different. We have kilowatt-hours per square meter, but we also have
kilowatt-hour per household and per person. So, RETScreen is very flexible
in allowing you to choose the units and the benchmark that you want to refer
to that you may want to use. So, I'll get out of this now by clicking on the X
button, and maybe just a note before we move on.

If you want to use some of those benchmarks in your analysis, a trick in

RETScreen is if you go onto "User Defined" as the project type, you'll notice
now that this button appears beside your benchmark, and if you click on that
button, you do get access to the benchmark database. And then, by selecting
any of these and click on the "Pace" button, you can actually pace this
benchmark data directly within the software. And there's a space for notes
here, and that's how you can use the benchmark database directly within
RETScreen if you want. Let's get back to exploring the benchmarking tool.
So, we've looked at some industrial facilities, the residential.

We've now looked at user defined and how to do the benchmark database.
What if we went to commercial institutional? You'll see here that we have
"Education" as the first one and all the different subtypes. So, remember, I
mentioned you could do offices and hospitals and shopping centers and
grocery stores and what not. Let's stay with a school, and we'll stay with this
example for the rest of this talk.

So, let's look at—dive a little bit more into detail in the benchmark analysis
on all the things you need to put in the software. So, the first thing I've
glossed over so far is this section at the top called "Facility Information".
And this facility information—it's important to get this right from the
beginning, since this information is used extensively within the portfolio
module and other places in the software—especially if you want to compare

8
with other buildings or group your analysis in a portfolio using RETScreen
Portfolio Analysis, which I'll show later. It's really important to take a couple
of minutes to fill in this information, and we'll do that now. This step can be
seen as part of sort of setting up your facility in RETScreen and can be an
important step in your energy master plan.

It's really crucial to get this data, because you're starting to structure your file.
So, let's say that this is an elementary school that we want to analyze and
we're preparing it for this webinar, and prepared by us here at RETScreen.
You'll see there's these little buttons to the right-hand side, and if I clicked on
those, we get some extra information about these prepared for and prepared
by fields. So, it's important to get this in, because if you want to, say, for
example, contact the people later, you get to—you can use this. So, this
webinar is being recorded by Seth.

They're based in the United States, so you can put in the details there, and
same for "Prepared by". You could put the details of who's doing this
benchmark analysis. So, right now, I'm doing it, and my name's Kevin, so I
can type that in and put in more details as I see fit. I click "Okay". The next
thing is now, we're starting to fill out this database that's going to be used
later, so now, we start putting information about the facility itself.

So, let's say that we're interested in this Oakville primary school. So, Oakville
Primary School and again, if I click on this button to the right, now, I get to
put in some details about the facility itself. So, maybe we're preparing a
benchmark analysis for the school board, and they have several schools and
they want to look at their elementary school division. And this is in their
Halton region of Ontario, and you can fill in information about who runs the
facility, et cetera. And notice, also, that we have this "User Defined" field
here, so that's going to be very flexible and that you can categorize your
facilities how you want.

So, maybe the school board has many schools scattered across the region, and
they want to compare their western region versus the northern or the southern
grouping or ones that are close to the lake, or ones that maybe have different
administrative structures, or ones that are heated with different fuels. So, you
can really add all sorts of different categories and subtypes here. I'm going to
leave this here as a group, and when I click "Okay" that data is then stored
within the file itself and is accessible, as always, by clicking on the button
again. So, what we've done now is we're now starting to structure the data
around the benchmark analysis. The last thing I want to do up in this "Facility
Information" section, is I might want to put a picture of the school.

So, let's click on that "Change Image" button, and I'm going to pick the
school picture. And you can change the image and you can re-size it and put
the image of the school as you want. So, that's the facility information. As I
said, it's important to get it right from the start. Now, let's go into the
benchmark and look into more detail each of these _____ that we were
looking at before.

9
So, the first thing, as I said, is RETScreen asks for the size and the unit. So,
the units are selected automatically by the software based on the facility's
height and type that you've selected in the facility information about. You
notice that some of them were per employee, some of them are per size, and
in the benchmark database, there was all types of different units. So, let's say
that we're—this school is 4500 square meters. So, RETScreen will now
calculate the fuel consumption. We'll get that to a moment.

As before, the energy unit we're using is a kilowatt-hour, but we could have
this a million Btu or megajoules or kilojoules per unit that we have here. Let's
leave it like that. And you'll see that RETScreen, once again, has
automatically put in a benchmark value. So, RETScreen will automatically
display a benchmark based on the facility type and the type selected in the
facility information above, and it displays the average value for the United
States as well as the typical minimum and maximum values. You can
overwrite these values, of course.

For example, as I showed before, benchmark values can come from the
benchmark database. They can come from corporate benchmarking efforts. It
can come from company targets or, in this case, a school board target. They
can come from industry averages or any other appropriate metric, which will
help you compare your facility with the performance objectives that you
have. So, we don't have any extra information about what the benchmark may
be for this school, so, we're going to leave these ones here.

Now, these come from the United States Energy Information Agency, and so,
this is an average value for benchmarks for schools in the U.S. So, this is our
starting point. So, now, let's look at the base case and the proposed case. So,
now, RETScreen is asking us, "What do you want to do? Where are you
actually starting from?"

So, this is our starting point, and you'd enter here the estimated base case for
the facility, and you use—it's in the same unit—the energy use intensity
units—as the benchmark. So, this number is then used to roughly calculate
the base case annual fuel consumption in the plan section below. By default,
RETScreen will display the benchmark data in the cell as sort of as a first
guess. Since we don't have any extra information, and we don't have a
specific school building yet, so, let's just use this value for now. It's the same
value as the benchmark.

We'll come back and change it as we get more information, as we get more
detailed in our project. You can, of course, overwrite this value as before, and
you can use a base case based on other more detailed data such as energy
modeling or billing data. And we'll get to that in a minute. You can also type
the target for the fuel saved. So, you'll see here that the target, as before, the
default is 15 percent, so it's prompting the question, "What if we reduced our
fuel consumption by 15 percent?"

It's just a starting point to get us to start thinking about reducing our fuel
consumption. And you can either type in a new value here—I can put in 13
percent—or you can use the "Select" by the drop-down button, and you can

10
also use the slider over here. So, that brings me to this graph to the right-hand
side. This graph is actually showing, in a visual format, the same information
which is here in these numbers. So, what's happening is that we have here this
horizontal line which shows our benchmark, and also, the base case.

And you'll see that it's right here at 262, and that's our benchmark and our
base case. And then, from the base case, we then show how if you had
various different reduction targets, how the energy use intensity would
decrease. And this little slider here with this dotted line that goes up will
show you where the target is currently set, and this dotted line across shows
where that would end up for your proposed case energy use intensity. So, for
example, we could look at what the proposed case energy use intensity would
be if we wanted to go 50 percent or even higher, or even a net 0 energy or
even positive energy where you'd be including renewables and so forth. So,
let's leave it at 15 percent for now.

And you'll see now, now that we have the proposed case—so, you'll see here,
it's between 210 and 245—in fact, it's 223, which is what this value is right
here, so that's that 15 percent. Now, the model can calculate the proposed fuel
consumption based on the target that we set in this cell—in this target cell.
Notice that the units are the same as the benchmark in energy use intensity.
So, the base case and the proposed case—the units are the same. So, now,
let's move to the plan.

And now that we have the—we can calculate the total fuel consumption for
the whole building over a year. But since we have the energy use intensity for
the base case and the proposed case, we can multiply it by the facility size—
above—to get the total estimated fuel consumption for the base and proposed
case and also show the fuel saved. So, note that this is for the entire facility
on an annual basis. This serves as a rough guide and this is what we call the
end use fuel consumption for both the base case and the proposed case. So,
you'll see that—this is why it's important to get your facility size in.

That screen will multiply the facility size by the base case and the proposed
case and yield our fuel consumption. And, of course, if you ever want to
know more about what RETScreen is calculating or what you should be
putting in, you can always click on the tiles to the left of the cells and you
will open up the help manual in RETScreen and RETScreen will tell you
what that cell is about. So, the last thing to look at for the benchmark analysis
before we move on is that there's a report page as well. So, you automatically
get a report—a benchmark report—in RETScreen. You click on "Create
Report"—a benchmark report—and so, you can automatically do your
benchmark reporting using this tool in RETScreen.

And remember, of course, that RETScreen's available in 36 languages, so,

you can have your report in 36 languages and send it off, say, for example, to
a colleague or a company which may be working in Chinese. And, of course,
all the benchmark data itself is in 36 languages. I'm going to switch back to
English for now. So, we now have an idea about elementary school. Now,
what if we want more detail?

11
How does a school actually consume energy? So, how does it get this 262-
kilowatt-hours per square meter? And what kinds of things can we do to save
energy? We put in this 15 percent as a first guess, but what is actually a
reasonable target? Can we do less?

Can we do more? We've looked at a broad benchmark for schools in general.

What about the school in my neighborhood? What about the school in
Oakville? So, let's go back to the homepage, and I want to show you that
within the quadrant of the benchmark, you'll see we have the virtual energy
analyzer.

And so, the virtual energy analyzer gives you access to RETScreen's
archetype database. So, you should leverage the RETScreen database of
model building archetypes to really give you a better idea for the base case
and the proposed case energy use intensities. So, I'm going to click right now
on the virtual energy analyzer, and this is how I get my access to the
archetypes, and you'll see here that we have the facility type and type—same
drop downs as we had before—and RETScreen—we have an archetype for
elementary school, a high school, and even classroom buildings in university
and college. So, let's keep on the elementary school. We're not going to
change the location of my project, and I'm going to put this archetype into my
existing benchmark effort.

And when I click on "Okay" I want to use the benchmark from the archetype,
and I click "Okay" and RETScreen now will update my file. So, a couple of
things to notice. First thing is that the information I have—my facility
information is intact, so that proves what I said before—is that it's important
to get that information right up front. A couple of extra tabs have appeared,
'cause now we have a feasibility analysis. We actually have modeled a school
using the archetype.

And, more importantly is—for benchmark analysis—is now some of this

benchmark information has changed. So, notice how the benchmark
information itself is the same as before. However, now, the base case and the
target are based on the actual energy model for the archetype. And this
proposed case is based on the fuel consumption savings from the various
energy efficiency measures that we've modeled on the energy page. And
notice, also, that there's a facility size for the archetype.

Remember before we put in 4500 square meters? Well, now, this archetype
itself is 3600 square meters. So, this allows RETScreen to calculate the total
fuel consumption for this archetype, so we can see what the total estimated
fuel consumption for the base case and the proposed case is, and what the fuel
saved is. So, those numbers are 568,000 kilowatt-hours in the base case, and
less than the proposed case, and the fuel saved. So, the difference between
those two.

So, look at this base case energy used intensity. It's 158 kilowatt-hours per
square meter, and RETScreen's telling us that this target is -32 percent. So, a
32 percent reduction in energy use intensity. So, how did we get this 158-
kilowatt-hours per square meter and how did we get this 32 percent target?

12
Well, as I said, they come directly from the archetype, and this is the power
of using RETScreen's archetype database as a great starting point for any
project—even benchmarking analysis.

So, even if you're just doing benchmarking, it really is worth it to use the
archetypes, 'cause at least you get a great starting point. So, I'm going to go
now and click on the energy model of RETScreen, and I'm not going to go
into detail here, but you can see that we've gone ahead and modeled an
elementary school, modeled a primary school, and we have all the different
components here. And within each of these, we have a base case and a
proposed case. We have energy efficiency measures, including cost and so
on. But what I want to show you is if I go to the comparison section in the
menu here, if I click on this comparison, I now get a summary of how the
fuels are being used in my building.

And specifically, if I show you this middle section here where it says,
"Savings", you'll see that for the—we list the fuel consumption in kilowatt-
hours for the base case and proposed case, and we break it down by how that
fuel is being used. So, we have fuel being used as heating. You could have
fuel being used as cooling—in this case, we don't—and fuel being used as
electricity. And when we sum them up, we get the total fuel used for this
school. So, from the base case—568,000 kilowatt-hours; that's exactly the
same number that we have in the plan on the facility plan—and the savings,
which are calculated here.

And look at the percentage of the fuel saved. It's 31.6 percent. Rounded up,
it's 32 percent. So, this is where our 32 percent comes from on the facility
page. It's actually modeled within RETScreen using the base case and the
proposed case, and the savings are marked as 32 percent.

So, this is what the model is showing us, and this is what the plan is on the
RETScreen facility page. So, these numbers won't change based on the
energy model. This is what is on the facility information page. And you'll
notice that the variance is zero percent. So, our archetype follows the plan.
Or rather, the plan is set to be equal to the base case and the proposed case
of the archetype.

Another thing I want to show is in this section below here that says,
"Benchmark". You'll notice here that the benchmark—the units are the same
as before. We have this 3600 square meters, and once again, we should break
down the fuel consumption for the energy use intensity for the base case and
proposed case for how it's used. So, the energy use intensity is for heating, for
cooling, and electricity, and then the total. And you'll notice here—158
kilowatt-hours per square meter. That's exactly the number that we have on
the facility page.

RETScreen will also show the benchmark from that facility information page
here so that you can compare what the current building is—in this case, the
archetype—how that compares with the benchmark. Notice, also, that you can
change the units here. So, if we wanted, for example, to change the units just
for reference purpose to see what is the energy use intensity per student or per

13
classroom—well, perhaps the school has, I don't know, 250 students in it—
you can get the energy use intensity on a per student basis. And it will also
update the benchmark. Well, it'll pull the information from that benchmark
and display it here.

We aren't changing anything on the benchmark page yet. If we want to reset

that, we can click this button, which says, "Copy from Facility" and we'll
bring that 3600 per square meter back over. So, we now have our base case
and proposed case, but what's in our proposed case? So, let's go back to
include measure, and here's all the different things that we can do to our
project, and let's suppose that this measure right here—we're not able to do
it this year. So, if I uncheck it, I don't include the proposed case in there.

And if you want more information about how this model works, you can look
at the feasibility analysis with RETScreen video either on the RETScreen e-
learning channel or on the Solutions Center website as well. Now, I'm going
to go back to the comparison section and look at this middle section where I
have the fuel saved. You'll see now that the proposed case is different. It used
to be 388,000. And especially that the fuel saved is no longer 32 percent, but
30 percent.

So, now, we see that there's what I've modeled—what I'm able to do in my
proposed case is different from my plan. So, in this case, we're going to
consume more energy on the proposed case, and that we have a five percent
reduction compared to what our plan is. So, what if we want to now update
that plan on the facility page? So, let's go on the facility page and just show
you that the plan here is 32 percent reduction and 108 kilowatt-hours per
square meter on the proposed case. I'm going to go back to the energy page,
and I'm going to click this button here which says, "Update My Plan" and
RETScreen's going to warn me—basically saying, "You're changing
something on the facility page."

And I'll say, "Okay." You'll see now that the plan here is 30 percent and the
variance is back to 0. Let's go back and look at the facility page, and we can
confirm that the plan has been updated to 30 percent. Now, what if we want
more detailed information than this? So, like, how much can I actually save
on natural gas versus how much can I save on electricity?

You may have a goal to reduce your greenhouse gases, for example, but your
electricity might come from mostly clean sources already. So, you need to
focus on fuel instead. Or perhaps you'd like to install photovoltaics, but you
need to reduce the electricity consumption as a priority. So, what you may
want to do, once you get more information, is you want to start setting the
benchmarks and targets for each of the fuels, not for the facility as a whole.
You'll notice that, so far, I've stayed in level one, and if I look at the menu up
here, I have—on my benchmark, I have level one.

Level one will typically be used to get a first guess at the energy situation for
the facility or for a pre-feasibility analysis where less detailed and lower
accuracy information is typically required. However, if I click on level two,
you'll see that the benchmark page changes, and now, I get much more detail.

14
So, level two allows me to set a consumption, a target, and even a benchmark
for each of the fuels in my building, so I can have separate benchmarks,
separate targets for electricity, natural gas, and any other fuel you have in
your project. So, level two will likely be used for existing buildings, where
more detailed and higher accuracy information is available, as a result of
either a feasibility study or a performance analysis that you could do in
RETScreen. So, by default, you'll see there's values already here.

RETScreen uses the base case fuels, which we set in the archetype on the
energy page, and these fuels come from the comparison section that we just
looked at. You can also enter the fuel consumption found on electricity or
fuel bills, if you're using an existing building. So, what if we did have an
existing building? So, let's say that you're an energy manager, and you want
to benchmark your actual school that you're responsible for. You can use the
actual fuel bills and enter them here as well.

Also, if you're doing any kind of energy tracking as part of an energy

monitoring program, you can use the information that you get from that,
including RETScreen's performance analysis. So, let's take a look at how to
do that. So, I've loaded up another project here. It's actually the same project.
It's the same school.

But in this time, you'll see that I've done the performance analysis. I'm just in
RETScreen, so I've actually gone and collected the utility bills, the natural gas
and electricity bills, and I've entered them here, and I've gone and done a
performance analysis, including regressions and so on. And, if you want
information about that, you can look at the performance analysis video that
we have on the RETScreen e-learning channel. So, within the analytics page,
I can create this annual bar graph, and this annual bar graph is very, very
powerful, because it shows me the annual fuel consumption for each year on
an annual basis. And you'll see here that I've set a reference here as being this
fiscal year here—2013 to 2014.

And if I click on "Format Graph" up here or right click, you'll see that I can
actually change this bar graph. And there's a benchmark section right within
the performance analysis of RETScreen. So, if I click on "Benchmark
Analysis", I'll then going to be graphing some of this information in
RETScreen. So, if I click "Okay", you'll see that we now overlay on this
graph some different lines. We have the total energy usage and energy use
intensity units—or kilowatt-hours per square meter—as well as the target and
the benchmark and the base line, which are graphed here.

And these values come straight from the facility page. What's interesting, as
well, is we can see here—RETScreen, in the table below, has now calculated
the total energy use intensity in those same units. So, this particular school
board—they wanted to put their 2013-2014 year as their reference year, and
RETScreen shows us that the reference year energy use intensity is 127
kilowatt-hours per square meter and that, through the years, they've managed
to reduce their energy use intensity, and for the last complete year, we have
106—just over 106 kilowatt-hours per square meter. So, let's see how we can
now adapt the benchmark for this building to actually reflect what we have.

15
So, I can go to the facility page, and let's say that the benchmark—they want
to get this building—the benchmark—to be what they had in the last full year.

So, we had 106 kilowatt-hours per square meter, and the base case for that
base case for their reference year was 127. And they can target 17 percent,
but perhaps they want to see if they can achieve a 20 percent reduction in
their energy use intensity. You'll see that the graph has now changed. We
have the benchmark here at 106, the base case is up at 127, and our target is
down 20 percent less at just over 100. Now, let's go look at the graph here.

And again, if I go on "Format Graph", I can now click this button that says,
"Copy from Facility", and update all that information into RETScreen's
annual bar graph. I click it; you'll see the values have changed. And when I
click "Okay", now we can see where the new benchmark is of 106 where their
referenced base case—the baseline is—at 127—and where their target is. So,
I've gone now and shown you how you can use the performance analysis
within RETScreen and how that links with benchmarking. So, I've mentioned
at several points now that the information you enter on the facility tab can be
used as part of your energy master plan for a portfolio wide benchmarking
effort.

And, if you're using RETScreen for your benchmarking, you automatically

get a great portfolio benchmarking tool. So, let's see how that works. So, I've
actually—this school is part of a larger portfolio of schools for this school
board, and I've listed it here. So, you'll see here, this last one is this Oakville
Primary School that we've been working on for the last little while, and I have
here a portfolio of schools for my school board and notice how some of the
schools are elementary schools, others are high schools, and there's even
some office buildings in here. So, here are all the buildings that I'm interested
in for this school board portfolio, but I can also create these subgroups on this
left here, and then look at the aggregate benchmarks on the dashboard.

So, if you want any information on how to build a portfolio, we do have that
video that we recorded on portfolio analysis with RETScreen, and I
encourage you to check that out to get into details. So, I have here this
portfolio, and if I go on the dashboard page, you'll see at the top section, I
have some portfolio level benchmarks that are already done for some of the
groups. So, let's look at the primary school. So, I click on "Elementary
School" and you'll see here that for each of the facilities in that subgroup, we
have the base case and proposed case. You have the base case and the
proposed case for energy use intensity, and if I hover over them, you'll see
that you get the base case total energy usage and the proposed case total
energy usage.

This graph here shows the facility size on the x-axis, and the fuel
consumption on the y-axis. And this line here is the benchmark—the energy
use intensity benchmark for this portfolio. Also, interestingly, is below, we
have this great table now for each of the facilities in this portfolio or sub-
portfolio. We list the size, what the benchmark for that facility is, and what
the base case and target are, and then calculate the proposed case as well. And
then, since we have—as always, since we have the facility size base case,

16
we're able to calculate the total end use base case fuel consumption, as well as
the proposed case, and any savings.

So, just to show you how you could do this on your own, if you click on
"Benchmark" up here in the menu, you get to pick what type of benchmark
dashboard you want. We're going to do buildings and factories. We're going
to look at the "All" subgroup, and if I click on—we can also check our unit,
and if I click "Okay" we get this graph with all of the buildings. So, the
elementary schools, the high schools, and the office buildings are all listed
here. And we see here the base case and the proposed case for all of those
facilities.

Now, if you click on this button in the menu called "Set Benchmark", you can
actually put the benchmark for this facility. If I click on "Okay", it will show
you what the current benchmark is, and if you want to override that with your
own. And when I click "Okay", we're going to draw this benchmark line.
You'll notice that the colors of these—of the base case and proposed case—
has changed. When the base case is below the benchmark, it will be green.

And when it's above the benchmark, it'll be red. So, you can—this gives you a
very quick visual way to see if you—to see where you stand in terms of your
benchmarks for your whole portfolio. So, the last thing I want to do in the few
minutes that I have remaining is I want to show you—we've looked at
buildings so far—I want to show you how to do it for power plant. So, I'm
going to go back to my main RETScreen file here, and we're going to look
at—as I said before, one of the best ways to look at benchmarks is to use a
virtual energy analyzer to start us off. So, I'm going to click on the virtual
energy analyzer, and now, we're going to look at power plant.

So, let's look at photovoltaic solar energy power plant. Let's do a fairly large
one, and let's say that this one is in Texas. And let's see where that brings us.
And we could go in and refine this, but let's just say that our PV plant is going
to be here, and when I click "Okay"—what we're doing now, is we're
leveraging the power archetypes to do our benchmark analysis. And I'll show
you how we do that.

So, once again, we have the location page and the facility page, and this is
now how we look at benchmarks for power projects. So, you'll see that we
have above, same as before, the facility information and the graph, but the
benchmark database now looks quite a bit different than we had for buildings.
So, on this section, you can prepare a quick benchmark analysis for various
types of power plants. So, RETScreen's power production benchmark shows
as a range of what we call "Energy Production Cost", and sometimes this is
called "Levelized Cost of Energy"—or LCOE—and these are done for
different power technologies under a variety of operating conditions and for a
range of installation and operating costs. The energy production costs include
installation and operating costs for central grid projects.

So, this is how much it actually costs to produce one kilowatt-hour of

electricity for each of these technologies. So, let's take a look at this graph.
So, you'll see that we have a list of technologies here on the left, and the one

17
that we selected—we're doing photovoltaic—is highlighted, and that the
range of energy production cost is shown by this bar. And if I hover over the
bar, we're going to see the minimum and maximum values in terms of dollar
per kilowatt-hour for the energy production cost for each of those
technologies. The minimum is the left side of the bar, and the maximum value
is the right side of the bar.

You'll see that our current benchmark is set where this tab and slide are with
this vertical line, and that that's echoed now here in this benchmark cell here.
So, the key assumptions used to calculate the minimum and maximums for
each of these, are available up here in this benchmark database. So, how did
we come up with this benchmark database? So, for each of these
technologies, we're able to know what the typical commercial very large size
and very small size, what the costs are, what the fuel rates—typical fuel rates
around the world—the range of fuel rates—and capacity factors. So, when we
run these for multiple scenarios, we did a big study, and we're able to get the
energy production cost for each of these technologies under a bunch of
different scenarios.

And when we take the minimum and maximum, that gives us our range. So,
this includes the power capacity or the size of the system, the fuel cost for
combustion power systems where we're burning fuel, the capacity for
renewable energy systems, and other—any general assumptions that we have
are down in this table below. And so, for example, let's take our photovoltaic
line here. If we have a small PV system of 10 kilowatts with a relatively low
capacity factor, say, of 13 percent, we know enough—we have enough
information given the cost of these systems to calculate what the energy
production cost would be for that system. The small, expensive, relatively
low-efficiency system would give us the maximum energy production cost.

Conversely, if we take a very large commercial system with lots of economies

of scale, much lower cost per unit, and really good efficiency, we get the
lower value for the energy production cost. So, you can enter any benchmark
reference point that you prefer. For example, it might be the wholesale
electricity price—in RETScreen, we call the "Electricity Export Rate" paid to
a private developer or merchant power plan or a spot electricity market. It
might be the retail electricity price paid by consumers in jurisdictions where
net metering is allowed, or it could be the value for a higher feed-in tariff or
other subsidized or premium rate paid by utilities or government for
promoting the deployment of clean energy power project. The idea here is to
get a benchmark for a value, for a project developer, would likely get paid for
power plant electricity production.

It's then easy to make a comparison with a range of comparable energy

production costs for various power technologies. So, this provides you with
an easy way to compare different power generation technologies and do a
quick check to see if a potential project could be financially viable, and if it
warrants further investigation using further RETScreen feasibility analysis.
So, just as for buildings, benchmarks are really useful for comparing projects.

18
 Same here for power projects. This allows you to compare different power
generation technologies.

Now, since we used an archetype, RETScreen was able to automatically

calculate the energy production cost for us. And it's shown here by this green
dash line, which I have here is 20.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. And, just like in
buildings, you can slide this around to change it, or use the drop down, or
type in your own value. So, where does this value come from? So, let's
actually go from the—in the finance model.

So, if I go to the finance model here in RETScreen, you'll see that we have—
we've modeled the complete photovoltaic project, and you'll see here, in the
bottom right-hand side, we have—in the "Financial Viability" section—we
have the energy production cost for this power plant. And that's where that
20.5 value came from. So, what if we had different parameters for our
projects? So, what if we, for example, changed the debt of our project to 50
percent and had only a 9 percent debt interest term, with a debt term of 8
years? You'll see now, that the energy production cost is no longer 20.5, but
rather $0.22 a kilowatt-hour.

So, if I click on this button here, just like we had in buildings, I can update
the information on the facility page. And this is warning me that I'm going to
change something on another page, and I click, "Okay". And if I return to the
facility page, you'll see that this now says $0.22. It's been updated. So, this
value can be updated automatically and is calculated automatically through
the finance page using the energy model.

So, we've gone through quite a bit here in benchmark analysis. We've gone
through buildings, we've gone through power. We've looked at feasibility
analysis, portfolio analysis, and performance analysis, and I hope now that
you're able to see how benchmark analysis is really easy in RETScreen and
that it's really flexible, allowing you to integrate it with lots of different
sources, including RETScreen itself, but other tools and detailed performance
analysis and so on. So, with that said, I'm going to turn it over now to Dinesh
for some question and answers, 'cause I'm sure some of you have questions
about how to do this.

Dinesh Excellent. Thank you very much, Kevin. That was very comprehensive. A
number of questions have come in, and now, some of them came in earlier,
and you already explained some of these points, but I think I'm going to go
through them, because it'll be a useful refresher for people, maybe who have
joined late, or just in general. So, I'll just go through them.

Some of them may be quick answers for you. The first question is, "What is
the source of the benchmark data? How can we get a copy of benchmark
sources to use as reference?"

Kevin Right. So, remember, there's two sources of benchmark data. So, the
benchmark data in power projects is right within the software itself. If you
click on this "Benchmark Database" button, you'll get all the consumptions

19
 for the benchmark database. And actually, if you plug these values into the
RETScreen model, you'll actually get these values.

So, that's one source. And the source for these capacities and the fuel rates—
those are different assumptions. The other assumptions are listed in the
bottom here, and then the cost data comes from our cost database. What
you're probably asking, though, is the facilities' or buildings' benchmark
database, so let me switch now over to the facilities database. So, if I click
here on the "Benchmark Database"—same icon, same button—it opens up a
different database, because this is for buildings now.

The sources for each of these is listed in this column called "Reference Here".
So, you'll see here that the value for this value—it comes from
NRKenOE2011. So, if you either click on that link or, if you go in the
RETScreen help manual and look under the bibliography, you'll be able to
find where that data comes from. RETScreen also has a description of the
source. So, some of these are surveys, some of these are models.

In this case, they're all surveys, but you'll see that the source is where the
information comes from. And we spend a lot of time to make sure—to
harmonize all this data to make sure that it's all compatible and comparable,
and that's where the data comes from.

Dinesh Okay. Great. Thanks, Kevin. For power, can you show the units in U.S.
dollars?

Kevin Yes. So, that's an excellent question, and actually, was one of the things had I
had a little more time, I would have showed. So, absolutely. So, for power
projects—both in the benchmark database, but also within this graph here—if
I click here and go to "User Defined" or if you have gone in RETScreen
under "File Settings" and set your software in to use U.S. dollars as well as a
conversion rate between U.S. and Canadian dollars, you can do that here. But,
if you click on "User Defined", you can actually change this so that it reflects
in U.S. dollars.

So, let's suppose that we had put this into U.S. dollars, and that the exchange
rate is—I don't know today, but suppose it's 1.25 Canadian dollars per U.S.
dollar, you'll see now that this value is—these ranges are updated. And, if you
do that in the "File" section as well, the whole model will calculate according
to the current unit that you have. You can also do adjustment factors as well.
So, even within one country—say, for example, in Canada or the United
States—projects that are in the far North or in Alaska could have very
different cost attributes than projects that are in the south or more populous
areas. So, you can actually adjust all that there.

So, these databases are, by default, in Canadian value, but you can convert
them to any currency that you want.

Dinesh Okay. Great. Thanks, Kevin. A sort of a related question here. This one also
came in earlier.

20
 "How does RETScreen decide what the benchmark is, given the maximum
and minimum? Is it just the average?"

Kevin So, I'm assuming here, we're talking about the—so, let's cover two parts.
If we're talking about power production, the maximum and minimum are
dependent on the cost and operating conditions on the size of those facilities.
So, like I said, a small, relatively inefficient, relatively costly photovoltaic
system will have a higher energy production cost compared to a very large
industrial scale—say, gigawatt scale PV plan—where there's huge economies
of scale and the cost of running it are quite low, where you would get a lower
value. On the buildings side—let me go onto this building side—so, here, we
also have the minimum typical and maximum typical. So, like I said, these
values come from the benchmark database.

So, if you go into the benchmark database and filter for the United States and
Canada, you will actually find these—a typical values, and then a minimum
typical and maximum typical. We've not included outliers, because you can
always have projects which are—so, for example, net zero energy. One could
argue that the minimum is zero. So, we will—we use the minimum typical
and maximum from the benchmark database. So, the sources of those
numbers are, like I said before, within the reference value/reference
column of the benchmark database.

So, if you want to find out where we get these numbers, you can follow these
references here.

Dinesh Okay. Excellent. All right. Is the benchmark database constantly updated?

Kevin Yes, the benchmark database is frequently updated as we see fit. So, some
technologies don't evolve as quickly as others, but yes, we do keep the
benchmark database updated. In fact, we're currently updating parts of the
power benchmark database. So, for example, for certain projects—
specifically, photovoltaics and offshore wind—the costs and operating costs
have reduced quite dramatically in the last couple of years, so we're updating
that. We're always keeping an eye on the market to see what technologies and
what areas we should be updating. So, yes, all those databases are kept up
to date.

Dinesh Okay. Here's an interesting one, which may be on many people's mind.
"What's the difference, Kevin, between the benchmarking capability of
Energy Star's Portfolio Manager and RETScreen? Is there an advantage to
using one or the other?"

Kevin Yeah. That's a great question. So, RETScreen Expert and Portfolio Manager
are complimentary tools. In simple terms, Portfolio Manager tells you the
what of energy consumption for your building, whereas RETScreen will help
you answer the how and the why of energy consumption. So, Energy Star's
Portfolio Manager and the Energy Star score is to help you understand the
energy performance for buildings and especially let you identify those which
are candidates for improvement and recognition mainly through their Energy
Star score.

21
However, it doesn't, by itself, explain why a building is preforming a certain
way or how to change that building's energy performance. RETScreen, in
addition to benchmarking and the customize portfolio—which we saw—your
analyses can be based on a customized performance or feasibility study. So,
RETScreen's Performance Analysis goes far beyond just a consumption
summary. It allows you to do really professional measurement and
verification or MMV under the global IPMVP standard. You can also do
monitoring, targeting, and reporting—or MT&R.

You can cue some analysis. You can dive into the regression model and
statistics to really accurately characterize and optimize the relationship
between the energy consumption and the energy drivers in your building.
So, that's a key word there is RETScreen really allows you to optimize that
relationship and understand and really explain the how and the why. So, the
fact that RETScreen lets you have a benchmark analysis, a feasibility
analysis, and a performance analysis and a portfolio analysis, all in one tool,
really make it quite a different tool than Portfolio Manager. It really, like I
said, gets you to understand the why and how of your energy.

And remember, also, that RETScreen isn't just for buildings, but we can also
do benchmarking on power plants, industrial facilities, single family homes,
and even individual measures. You could benchmark, just say, a heat
recovery process and so on. And, of course, it's available in 36 languages, and
used all around the world. Portfolio Manager's only available in a few select
countries—like Canada, United States for now. So, I guess in summary,
RETScreen Expert and the Portfolio Manager are essentially companion
tools.

That being said, the output of Portfolio Manager can be used as an input into
RETScreen on this facility page that I have up on the screen here. The same
can actually be said for other benchmarking methodologies—so, if you're
using Green Globe or corporate benchmark targets or other things like that.
We found that organizations generally don't need to choose one over the
other, because they each ask different questions. They're complimentary.
You really—if you need to use Portfolio Manager, you really should use it
side by side with RETScreen to leverage the strength of each.

Also, while I'm on the topic, one of the things we've also done in RETScreen
is we've incorporated some of the elements of the ISO 5001 Compliance
Monitoring System. So, that's another—not exactly benchmarking, but it's
another standard that you can use with RETScreen. We've also added
different forecasting tools and event logging and other things like that.
Another thing to remember is Portfolio Manager is a web-based tool, and it
really shines when calculating that Energy Star score, whereas RETScreen
is more of an integrated desktop application for lots of different project types.
And, also note, that you can integrate the two, and we're working on
automating that.

So, over the next while, the connection between Portfolio Manager and
RETScreen Expert is viable to be easier and easier so that you can just click
on a button and have the data shared between the applications.

22
Dinesh Okay. That's really helpful, Kevin. Great. There's still questions coming in
here, so we'll try and get through as many as we can. Just to assure people
that if your question isn't answered, we'll certainly try to answer you offline
after the webinar.

But, we'll get through as many as we can. We have about—a little less than
10 minutes. The next question here is, "Does RETScreen show or include
greenhouse gas emission benchmarks?"

Kevin So, yes. So, for now, if you're doing—so, on this benchmark page, we're
looking at adding that in sort of the short to medium term. In the interim, if
you're using the feasibility analysis—whether that be for a building or for a
power project—you do get the benchmark page here. Now, I actually don't
have—I don't have the project loaded, but if you do have—on this
"Emissions" page, you will have your emissions analysis, and you can use
that as part of your GHG benchmarking efforts.

On the performance analysis side, of course, in RETScreen—so, when you're

doing your performance analysis, you do have your total GHG emissions
broken down by fuel, and you can use that as well on your—I showed the
annual bar graph, but you could also have this—I have it on energy, but you
could also do it on GHGs. In fact, we're working with many government
departments that have exactly that, that have precisely GHG benchmarks, and
all these government departments are using RETScreen. So, you can do it
now, and we're looking to keep adding features and to make that easier as
time goes on.

Dinesh Okay. Next question, Kevin, is, "What is the difference between a benchmark
value and a target value?"

Kevin That's a good question. That depends. They often get mixed up in their
meaning, but a benchmark and a target are actually different things. So, a
benchmark value is usually set in reference to other similar facilities. So, a
benchmark can be external to your specific facility as something you want to
compare to.

Your target may be set by your organization, and your target may be that all
your buildings have to meet, at minimum, the benchmark value. So, your
target would be the benchmark. In that case, they'd equal. But, your target
could also be you want to have 30 percent reduction below the industry
benchmark. Or, you want—in the case of this school that we said—you might
want to set your benchmark to be 20 percent below a reference year.

And so, the benchmark and the target are different things. They can be the
same—and sometimes, they are—but they are actually different things.

Dinesh All right. Thanks. We'll try and get through a couple more questions here.
The next one is, "Can you change the set point of a building before a
proposed case? For example, if you want to make the building cool less
or heat less during the seasons?"

23
Kevin Yes, you can. This is actually more of a performance analysis question, and
we deal with this briefly in the performance analysis video and webinar that
we did. But, when you're doing a feasibility analysis—so, this is a feasibility
analysis question, and it's in that feasibility analysis video—you can set up
your set point there and have it exactly like you say so that your building will
heat less or cool less, depending on where that point is. There's actually—
there's quite a bit of detail on how to get there. It gets quite technical.

So, it probably would be best to—we can discuss this by e-mail offline,
because it really—it can get quite technical, and it doesn't really have much to
do with benchmarking at this point.

Dinesh Okay. This actually may be related to that. Another question is, "Can you
show how we can access the other videos that you mentioned?" You said
something about the home page, so perhaps those other—that may be useful
for some of these questions, the e-learning channel.

Kevin So, several times throughout this talk, I mentioned some of the other stuff,
and we're building up quite a nice e-learning channel. So, if you on the "File"
home page in RETScreen and click on the "Help" page here, you'll see here
that we now have a growing library of video content here. So, the feasibility
analysis—so, that set point—is addressed in part under this video. The
performance analysis and how to do that is addressed here in this
performance analysis video, and how to build up our portfolio is in this one
here. So, if you go to—in the software itself, "File" "Help"—it's right in this
"Help" and "Contact Us".

You can also go to the YouTube channel and type in "RETScreen E-learning"
and you'll find us there.

Dinesh Right. And Kevin, maybe you can just show, too, just on the home page, the
actual link directly to the e-learning channel. Sort of the shortcut.

Kevin Yeah. Right over here. Actually, if you go over here to "E-learning" and click
that, it will open a browser window right to the YouTube e-learning channel
directly.

Dinesh Okay. Wonderful. Now, I'm conscious of the time. We only have about three
minutes left, so we'll try and get through one or two more here. "How does
the baseline predict energy consumption in a building and how does the
formula predict energy consumption?"

This may also be a little more on the performance side, but maybe you can
give a brief answer, Kevin.

Kevin Yes, that is definitely on the performance side. So, your baseline in
performance analysis is—you can find that—you can use a baseline from a
benchmark. You can also use a regression as your baseline. And what
RETScreen will do—it will create a relationship between your energy drivers
and your actual energy consumption. So, yeah, that definitely is more
performance analysis.

24
 Maybe I can provide a little more detail in e-mail after, but basically, in
RETScreen, when you're doing performance analysis, you can create a
baseline either using regression or you can use a benchmark as your baseline
as well.

Dinesh Okay. Great. Let's try and do one more. Again, this may not be able to—it's
sort of a one-minute answer, but you can just try a quick one. "What is the
difference between the archetype data and the data used to create the
benchmarking database? And what's the source of the archetype data?"

Kevin So, the archetypes are full facility archetypes that have been developed with
tons of industry experts and costing experts and modeling professionals and
engineers and research experts all around the world. And they're continually
growing that database, so these are full facility archetypes or typical
buildings, including cost and cost-effective energy efficiency measures. For
the power archetypes, similarly, they're validated, full project analysis,
including all the cost. The relationship between the benchmarks is that you
can use the archetypes as—in fact, even if you don't have a building, you
should be using the archetypes to make that link between the benchmark and
a real project so that as you move forward in your analysis, you can always
refer to the archetype. So, for example, we had—we started off—remember,
we started—"Well, what if we actually reduced 15 percent?"

But, for a school, we found that using these archetype database and the virtual
energy analyzer, that you could reasonably achieve a 30 percent reduction in
Oakville. And remember that the archetype database is dynamically
calculating. So, if I were to put that project in Miami or Alaska or British
Columbia or Southern California, that number is dynamically calculated. So,
in some places, 30 percent might be easy; in other places it might be a stretch.
So, that's the relationship between those—the archetypes and the benchmark
database.

Dinesh All right. Thank you, Kevin. There are still a few questions left, but I'm
conscious that we've come to the end of our time, so I'll just be sure that those
whose questions haven't been answered, that we'll do our best to answer those
offline. And, at any time if you have questions, feel free to contact
RETScreen customer support. We get back to you as quickly as possible, and
we welcome all sorts of questions about the RETScreen software.

You can find their customer support e-mail on our website—

www.RETScreen.net. So, with that, I will hand it back over to Katie to close
the presentation.

Katie Great. Thank you again. On behalf of the Clean Energy Solutions Center, I'd
like to extend a "Thank you" to all of our expert panelists and to our attendees
for participating in today's webinar. We very much appreciate your time and
hope, in return, that you have some valuable insights that you can take back
to your ministries, departments, or organizations. We'd also like to invite you
to inform your colleagues and those in your networks about Solutions Center
resources and services, including our no-cost policy support through our Ask
an Expert service.

25
I invite you to check out the Solutions Center website if you would like to
view the slides and listen to the recording for today's presentation, as well as
previously held webinars. Additionally, you'll find information on upcoming
webinars and other training events. We are also now posting the webinar
recordings to the Clean Energy Solutions Center's YouTube channel. Please
allow about a week for these recordings to be posted. Finally, I'd like to
kindly ask you to take a moment to complete the short survey that will appear
when we conclude the webinar.

Please enjoy the rest of your day, and we hope to see you again at future
Clean Energy Solutions Centers. This concludes our webinar.

26