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Monthly Archives

August 2015

Distributed Energy; Batteries and Bread Machines

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 3 Comments
The Association of Energy Services Professionals (AESP) Summer Conference included interesting bookend plenary discussions for this post.  The opening plenary featured motivational speaker, Murray Banks; not to be confused with Matt Foley: “eating a steady diet of government cheese and living in a van down by the river”.  Actually, if triathlons and mountaineering were auto racing, the Banks family would be the Andrettis. The closing plenary featured representatives from SolarCity, Opus One Solutions, and Enbridge, Inc.  SolarCity is the Elon Musk-owned photovoltaic manufacturer/installer.  Opus One is a smart grid software company with ties to Tesla as well.  Enbridge is a…
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Supercharging Behavior and the Four Dollar KiloWatt Hour

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant One Comment
Google search tells me that I have never used the word “hoopla” in an Energy Rant.  Here goes.  There is a great deal of hoopla in the industry for behavior programs.  Last week, AESP featured a brown bag webinar – Current and Future Trends for Behavior Change Energy Efficiency Programs.  It is so new, it isn’t yet available in the AESP library, at least as I write this.  Now that I mention it, the other half of our subcommittee produced a Strategies newsletter article for commercial and industrial behavior programs, coming next month.  Don’t take your eye off the inbox.…
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The State of Program Evaluation and Tips for Picking Good Evaluation Practitioners

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant One Comment
This post is brought to you by the International Energy Program Evaluation Conference (IEPEC), circa 19, er 2015.  I moderated one session featuring four great papers and presentations concerning residential space heating and cooling.  I also observed one concurrent session for nearly all the timeslots in the conference.  The theme I found, which was very pleasing to me, is that doing useful research and evaluation is challenging and expensive. The reason it pleases me is that, well, getting things right is everything, but it also levels the playing field.  I hate losing bids, but it is less painful to lose…
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Contracts from Hell; Donald Trump Clauses

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant One Comment
Perhaps; no doubt; probably; certainly; damn sure, the least liked aspect of my job is reviewing contracts with which the buyers sentence their contractors to unlivable conditions.  Anyone watch The Donald lately describing people as “idiots” and “stupid”?  The Donald comes to mind when I read some of these contract terms and conditions. First of all (and I don’t like to use that phrase because it sets the stage for conflict and ranting but this IS The Energy Rant), lawyers must get paid by the word of rambling, incomprehensible prose they produce.  Why not get paid to produce a contract…
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The Grid; History and Where it May be Going

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Last week in Pricing PV Energy, I discussed how solar photovoltaic, aka PV, aka rooftop solar, will not take down utilities or the grid.  The premise of that was once net metering policy pays PV owners what their electrons are worth in real time, the cost effectiveness will be capped, likely at some number considered to be not cost effective by most people.  This week I pulled out a good old article, not to be confused with good ol boy, from Fortnightly, which describes other reasons death of the grid is overblown hype.As with most things, to have a rooted…
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