Black Hills witness explains DSM baselines, electrification modeling; full fuel‑switch incentives drive company figures

Black Hills Colorado Gas witness Will Cottrell told the Colorado Public Utilities Commission on Oct. 31 that the company’s planning assumptions for DSM measures and beneficial electrification are drawn from its existing DSM plan and a set of executable spreadsheets filed as Hearing Exhibits 5‑19 and 5‑20.

Cottrell, testifying under oath, said planning has relied on a consistent baseline across the service territory for purposes of modeling energy and greenhouse‑gas savings, while evaluations and implementation verification may account for local differences. "Standard practice has been a consistent baseline across the entire service territory," he said on the record.

He described the way the company converts measure savings to therms and dekatherms, and how those lifetime and annual savings are derived: modelers use baselines and efficient unit assumptions in the DSM plan, subtract the efficient unit from the baseline to calculate savings, then convert…