by Brianna Crandall — September 15, 2014—The Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI) announced on September 9 that it will administer certification for the Performance Excellence in Electricity Renewal (PEER) program. PEER is promoted as the nation’s first comprehensive, consumer-centric, data-driven system for evaluating power system performance, and is modeled after the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) sustainability certification program for buildings.
“The PEER program provides a much more complete picture of the efficiency, quality, safety, resilience and reliability of energy generation, transmission and distribution systems than is currently available. It provides actionable information that empowers building owners and power providers to configure and operate their systems to maximum effectiveness across these key metrics,” said Mahesh Ramanujam, president, GBCI.
“Buildings and the power systems they rely on are inextricably interconnected,” continued Ramanujam. “Building on the success of USGBC’s Demand Response Partnership, PEER is a logical addition to the growing number of certification programs and professional credentials that GBCI oversees and administers.”
The PEER program is the result of former Motorola CEO Bob Galvin’s vision of “perfect power,” which sought to transform the efficiency and effectiveness of the electricity system. PEER assesses system performance and verifies measurable outcomes across four critical aspects of power systems — Enabling Customer Action, Operational Efficiency, Reliability, Power Quality and Safety, and Energy Efficiency and Environment.
The first set of PEER certified projects will be announced at the annual Greenbuild Conference and Expo to be held in New Orleans October 22-24, 2014. USGBC has also noted that in 2015, it will look at PEER certification as a pilot credit within the LEED green building rating system.
