Voltage optimisation is being increasingly promoted as a solution for reducing electrical energy consumption in buildings.

Typically manufacturers of voltage optimisation technology make very specific claims about the amount of energy their product will save their clients. For example, putting an exact percentage of annual electricity use that the product will save, and even going as far as to guarantee these savings. However proving energy savings for voltage optimisation systems is very difficult. The difficulty in proving or disproving savings presents a problem for building energy managers. The physics of how voltage optimisation systems can save money is relatively simple, but the savings are highly dependent on the type of equipment that is currently installed in the building in question. Short of a comprehensive survey of the energy use and useful work done by every piece of equipment on site (both before and after VO installation), it is not physically possible to determine whether or not the VO technology has introduced any benefit. However, this is not to say that there is no benefit, only that the benefit cannot be known accurately. The problem VO poses is that of determining the change in behaviour of a complex dynamic system due to change in a single input value (i.e. the voltage input to the site). However, the output of this complex systems is a stochastic process, with many sources of uncertainty. These sources of uncertainty fall under two categories; epistemic uncertainty (i.e uncertainty about the system itself, the types of motors, lights etc.) and aleatory uncertainty (i.e. uncertainty about how the system will be used during a given year). In this paper we propose a systematic approach, not yet applied to voltage optimisation, to quantify these uncertainties. The epistemic uncertainty in this case refers to the uncertainty regarding the electronic equipment in the building and how it will be affected by a reduction in voltage. This uncertainty is epistemic because it is something that can be physically known, but due to the complexity of testing required to determine it, it will, in all practical terms, remain uncertain to some degree. The aleatory uncertainty is perhaps the most difficult to deal with. The aleatory uncertainty refers to the uncertainty around how the system in the building year on year (the equipment will stay the same, but the way in which it is used is uncertain from year to year; the duration / intensity of use etc. will change). This paper presents an approach based on Bayesian statistics to simplify the epistemic uncertainty and use Monte Carlo methods are used to determine an a probability distribution of the expected energy savings, which we believe will provide building energy managers with a probabilistic estimate of savings, which will hopefully provide a more informative basis for their decisions.