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Aug 20
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Efficiency at ACEEE – Something New, Something New

By Energy Rant No Comments
Last week, I participated in ACEEE’s Summer Study for Buildings in Pacific Grove. This week’s Rant features themes of our industry’s direction as described by the hundreds of papers presented at the conference. Most of what I’ve been writing about in recent months is happening in many places. Hurray! EISApcolypse?  Bring It! EISA (you say ee-suh, I say I-suh), otherwise known as the Energy Independence and Security Act, will in 2020 mandate the use of light emitting diodes as the standard for applications. While EISA may not mandate LEDs, or even mandate LED-level efficacy, the horse has left the barn.…
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Jul 23
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How About Some D in DSM?

By Energy Rant No Comments
I have always found it interesting that “demand-side management,” the term that is generally used synonymously with energy efficiency programs, includes virtually no demand management whatsoever. The term “demand-side” simply means the energy consuming side of the energy transaction, whereas, “demand” is an instantaneous power draw from a device, building, feeder line, substation, power plant, or an entire power grid. To date, energy efficiency programs have primarily been in search of any kWh (energy) savings at any time. I call these kWh “dumb kWh”. So, we have dumb energy efficiency savings from a supposedly smart grid. Discuss. This has got…
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Jun 18
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trailing loads and forecasts

Mindbender: Efficiency Thrashes Supply

By Energy Rant 2 Comments
A couple months ago in Outside the Boxer, we considered efficiency as a resource to be compared with supply-side resources. In May, we challenged minds with We All Un-Bundle, suggesting that utilities get markups for services delivered over their infrastructure. Let’s advance these concepts! Efficiency – A Utility Perspective Utilities are slow to change for many reasons: Every interest group and intervenor wants more from them. They are rewarded for 30-40 year investments and not breakthroughs like iPhones. Customers demand reliability, resilience, and low cost above all else. Utilities have captive customers with few (but growing) options. They deliver a…
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Nov 06
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Why Energy Efficiency? – Five Findings

By Energy Rant No Comments
This year ACEEE published a three-part series on why people and companies invest in energy efficiency. First, they provide some guesstimates of energy efficiency investment in the United States. Their researched estimates vary from $60 billion to about $120 billion, annually. Is this a reasonable guesstimate? According to their State Scorecard, program spending on natural gas and electric demand-side management programs held steady at about $7.5 billion in 2016. Check. The International Energy Agency pegs worldwide investment at $231 billion and about $40 billion in the U.S. Check. As a laugh test, $100 billion is a measly 0.5% of the…
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Oct 23
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Energy Program Evaluation Tales from the Dark Side

By Energy Rant No Comments
The Energy Rant is not for the weak-kneed who prefer to live in the land of unicorns, fairy dust, and lollipops. This week is no exception.This Rant is brought to you by the recent ACEEE paper, Recent Developments in Energy Efficiency Evaluation, Measurement and Verification. Burned on the Alter of 90/10 A major objective of most evaluation contracts is to punch the 90/10 ticket. To recap, 90/10 simply means there is a 90% chance that the results of the population, if evaluated in full, will be within plus or minus 10% of the results for the sampled, studied projects. As…
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Jan 03
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And the 2017 Oscar Goes to… AESP!

By Energy Rant One Comment
Happy New Year! I am launching 2017 with this positive, upbeat Rant (my apologies to all my Oscar the Grouch fans). I have a go / no-go test for our company’s involvement with organizations: if we are going to be members of something, we are going to participate in, benefit from, and contribute more than money to the organization. Otherwise, it is indeed a waste of money. The Association of Energy Services Professionals (AESP) is an organization I’ve been involved with since 2010. That was the year I attended the big shindig, the National Conference, for the first time. Since…
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Nov 21
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audits or colonoscopy

The Results of Your Energy Colonoscopy Are In

By Energy Rant No Comments
Last week I was working on corporate tasks, so I needed to go into my vault of gems for pontification.  The subject that emerged is energy audits and certifications, specifically from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE).  The document is the Standard for Commercial Building Energy Audits, Standard 211P.  It was up for public review in August of this year. There are a couple of things our industry has tried to unsuccessfully accomplish over the years.  One is drop simple payback as a means to communicate financial benefits of implementing energy efficiency (or any) projects.  This…
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Oct 31
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Benchmarking Clowns

By Energy Rant One Comment
It’s Halloween. Hundreds of thousands of people have to figure out a different costume because a clown plague has infected the country. While I don’t consume tabloid news, I did hear that in some cities, the clowns are getting beat up. I thought, now that isn’t a bad idea, but I wouldn’t advise that. When I was a kid, Halloween antics included dozens of mushy tomatoes and cucumbers left behind in the garden. These have the impact of water balloons, and they make a fine mess. For this post, I referenced my program booklet for ACEEE’s 2016 Summer Study on…
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Oct 10
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Automated M&V – In Your Dreams

By Energy Rant No Comments
Last week, we explored the state of EM&V 2.0 and its considerable, to say the least, constraints. This week, we look more intensely at fallacious “automated M&V”. Automated M&V is an oversold and over-hyped concept. When something is automated, it takes inputs (data) from various sources, often hundreds of sources, with high frequency, maybe by the second or on a Hertz (many times per second) scale. Then the brains of the automated doohickey compute and translate the data into solutions or outcomes. For buildings of all types, from single family homes to large commercial and industrial facilities, automated systems are…
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Oct 03
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Evaluation, Measurement and Verification 2.0; A Whale Bus or an Airbus?

By Energy Rant 2 Comments
Evaluation, Measurement and Verification 2.0, or EM&V 2.0, is a nerdy term coined in 2014, according to this blog by Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP). The hype of EM&V 2.0, which I will explain later, is that it will automate measurement and verification, putting us engineers out of business. This is not going to happen anytime soon. Definition 2.0 The definition of EM&V 2.0 boils down to using utility meter interval data, typically hourly or sometimes every 15 minutes, or maybe even 5 minutes, to disaggregate and measure impacts from energy efficiency measures. One could consider that EM&V 2.0 is…
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We talk a lot about energy – from the serious to the satirical.

All things energy. That’s our jam.

We talk a lot about energy – from the serious to the satirical.

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