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Aug 29
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NTG

Net to Eeeew, Gross – Pin the Tail on the Donkey

By Energy Rant One Comment
Anytime I listen to a net-to-gross (NTG) scrum, the philosophical gears in my brain ramp up to a smooth whir. This is what happened at ACEEE summer camp, also known as the ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings. This post is inspired by a paper titled “Applying Gross Savings and Net Savings in an Integrated Policy Framework”, presented by Dan Violette (Navigant) and co-authored by Elizabeth Titus (Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships), Pam Rathbun (Tetra Tech), and our very own Teri Lutz. Since Dan referenced the SEE Action Energy Efficiency Program Impact Evaluation Guide, for purposes of saying the…
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Aug 08
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deregulation

Betting with Deregulation – A Risky Proposition

By Energy Rant No Comments
Energy is a commodity, and like all commodities, it is wise to hedge risk; not go the other way and place bets. Unless you are a certain presidential candidate with privileged information on cattle futures, I would stay away from betting, er investing in, commodities in general, and energy specifically. To digress for a moment, recall when gasoline cost $4 per gallon, there were all kinds of calls to investigate price gouging and rigging the market. Bill O’Reilly would ignorantly rant about the “speculators”. I said then, in 2008 just before this blog was born, that was poppycock. Senators Chucky…
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Apr 18
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Behavior Score

Burning Behavior Barricades Down

By Energy Rant No Comments
Last week, we briefly introduced an inquisitive concept: what is an incentive for, and who should get it? The rest of the post was consumed with a true story that could be called a merry-go-round of behavior that whipsawed a customer’s energy use over a period of several years. Quantifying Behavior Barricades Every program has some level of behavior nudging. The chart illustrates my first shot for estimating the relative dimensions of behavior barricades that must be overcome for various buckets of programs. The program type requiring the least behavior that I can think of is an upstream incentive program.…
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Mar 28
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potential studies

Energy Efficiency Potential Studies – Unnecessary for Utility 2.0

By Energy Rant 2 Comments
A few weeks ago in Cost of Saved Energy, I received some great feedback and a few questions. The questions involved energy efficiency potential studies and what are best practices. You know what they say about thinking outside the box – in this case I don’t know what the box is so I have no problem going off the ranch.I started with the Ten Pitfalls of Potential Studies by Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP) which didn’t answer many questions on this topic, but it did release an avalanche of unchained thought. Right out of the gate, pitfall number 1, Defining “Achievable”…
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Feb 15
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saved energy

Cost of Saved Energy – Drop it and Give Me Twenty

By Energy Rant 2 Comments
I was planning to write about industrial efficiency and the crimes of opting out this week, but while searching for supporting data, I found other interesting stuff; namely the cost of saved energy by state and by year. In 2009, ACEEE published a paper, Saving Energy Cost Effectively: A National Review of the Cost of Energy Saved Through Utility-Sector Energy Efficiency Programs (short titles are not one of their strong suits). A few years later they published an updated paper for the 2014 Summer Study For Energy Efficiency in Buildings. This one was called, Still the First Fuel: National Review…
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Nov 16
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Energy Codes – Bahahaha, You’re Killing Me

By Energy Rant One Comment
Last week’s post for Strategic Energy Management was milquetoast calm and civil. This post will provide more of what many Rant readers crave: brash provocation, with concrete reality to back it up. Here begins the fantasy of energy code effectiveness and compliance. This topic was spawned as I was assessing ACEEE’s 2015 State Energy Efficiency Scorecard, for The Daily, Michaels’ internal daily news blog. The ACEEE state scores are developed from 50 total points, allocated as follows.My comment was/is that points for code enforcement and level of stringency should be reversed; i.e., there should be four points for enforcement and…
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Nov 09
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Strategic Energy Management – Try Not, Do or Do Not

By Energy Rant 3 Comments
A couple months ago, I co-authored an AESP Strategies article with Diana Husmann from Nexant and Teri Lutz from Tetra Tech. The subject was non-residential behavior programs. One of the undercurrents that was revealed to me in that process is that strategic energy management, SEM, seems to get pigeonholed as a “behavior program”. First, to digress a bit, every program is a behavior program. ACEEE summarizes these nicely in their Field Guide to Behavior Programs. A super summary of behavior elements are as follows, taken directly from that paper. Cognition programs focus on delivering information to consumers. Categories include general and targeted communication…
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Jul 20
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Utility Investors: Chillax and Find a Mirror

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Utility Stuff No Comments
The Energy Rant blog, in general, could be considered the sausage factory of energy efficiency; exploring the inner workings and realities of the business.  Everyone else writing about energy efficiency is talking about the delicious bratwurst and hotdogs one might get at the ballpark.  This week, however, we will explore EE from the utility shareholder perspective, in the sausage room, rather than the ballpark frank of conventional wisdom. To further define the sausage room of energy efficiency, this time I begin with a white paper by ACEEE,Policies Matter: Creating a Foundation for an Energy-Efficient Utility of the Future.  One gist…
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Jul 06
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Low-Income Programs; Kool Aid and Happy Face Rugs

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 2 Comments
Last week, we learned about lost revenue adjustment mechanisms, also known as LRAM.  I said, “Many people don’t seem to be that interested in the right answer in many jurisdictions.”  This week, I investigated another paper posted to the University of Chicago’s website, authored by two University of California-Berkeley economics professors and one University of Chicago professor.  Collectively, these flunkies have PhDs in economics from MIT, UC-Berkeley, and Princeton.  The paper drew hellfire from some in our industry, because, uh, they don’t like anyone messing with the Kool Aid punch bowl. The paper investigates the claimed savings for the Federal…
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Jun 29
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Lost Revenue Adjustment; One Patch in the Quilt

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant One Comment
This week, I dive into something I have wanted to know more about for some time: efficiency program funding mechanisms.  This post is based on a recent paper released by ACEEE, Valuing Efficiency: A Review of Lost Revenue Adjustment Mechanisms. Utilities must be allowed to make enough money to draw required investor capital, debt and equity, to fund their operations.  Energy efficiency programs are funded by ratepayers, one way or another – not out of shareholder charity.  All states with programs have some sort of transparent, although usually incomprehensibly confusing, means for cost recovery or lost revenue recovery. Although the ACEEE…
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All things energy. That’s our jam.

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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