AESP Archives - Page 2 of 5

Sep 03

Strategic Energy Management is Elvis

By Jeff Ihnen Energy Rant No Comments

You’ve been there – on the phone trying to get some help from a car dealership, appliance store, online retailer. The menu choices are unclear, especially for auto stores (hit zero). It makes me cringe when I hear my Mom say she called Dell for help with her computer. Yikes, Mom. This isn’t the plumber on Main Street. Maybe Dell isn’t bad, but hearing my Mom say she was on the line “with them” for two hours, I have my conceptions. I would expect no help from an organization like that. Any help would be above and beyond. So what’s…

Jul 22

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Kooky Car CEOs Catch Stockholm Syndrome

By Jeff Ihnen Energy Rant No Comments

As a company leader and owner, efficiency advocate, and AESP Board Member, I spend many of my waking hours and maybe many of my unconscious hours analyzing and processing behavior. What motivates people, and why do they choose what they choose? When I read a headline like White House Poised to Relax Mileage Standards - Rebuffing Automakers, the caution lights start spinning in my mind. What is going on here? Why on earth would they want this? Read on. The Trump administration seeks to reduce the federal average fuel mileage standard from the Obama-set 54 miles per gallon to 37…

Aug 27

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Efficiency – With Tectonic Power and Pace

By Jeff Ihnen Energy Rant One Comment

I am no mountaineer, but without looking, I know the Himalayan range is growing taller. How do I remember this? Because the earth’s crust is made up of tectonic plates that are always moving. The edge of tectonic plates forms fault lines for earthquakes. Did you know, that at some point, coastal California will be neighbors with Alaska? It’s true. A hell of a lot of earthquakes will happen in between, giving “bumpy ride” new meaning. In Southern Asia, the plate that India sits on is slamming into Asian landmass, thrusting Everest higher, adding roughly 2.4 inches per year to…

Aug 13

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Modern Efficiency and the Disappearing Clapping Seals

By Jeff Ihnen Energy Rant One Comment

A couple of weeks ago I was directed to an article in AESP’s magazine discussing ways to improve efficiency program cost-effectiveness. Although it wasn’t about avoided-cost and benefit-cost tests, it provides good stuff for elaborating in this blog. “Cost effective” in the context of the article means lowering the cost per unit of energy or demand saved. Certainly, this helps to improve benefit-cost ratios, for most of the convoluted tests, that must have been concocted by graduate students under the influence of mind-altering chemicals. Boy, do I wish we could dial back forty years so we could simply compare the…

May 29

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Tele-Phoney Nincompoops; Efficiency Pros – Your Jobs are Safe

By Jeff Ihnen Energy Rant 2 Comments

There is more computing power in your pocket than we used to put a man on the moon. Have you heard this lately? I heard it last week at the closing plenary for AESP’s spring conference. Doesn’t it sound grand? Aren’t we smart? Not really, and not so much. Do Smart Phones Make us Dumb? Do smartphones and their apps make us dumb? Maybe not, but unlike the fairy tale that coffee stunted our growth as children, the drones do stunt cerebral, intellectual, and social growth for sure. For example, people consult with their bestie drones 80 times per day…

Apr 30

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Guest Post: I Get So Emotional, Baby

By Liz Haworth Energy Rant One Comment

Sorry, it’s not Whitney Houston, or Jeff Ihnen, writing this week’s Rant. It’s Kristin Laursen filling in while Jeff puts his feet up, sips martinis, and listens to 90s love songs (at least two of the three of those are true). Last week in Jeff’s Rant, he told us that consumers rule and drive everything, and that we’re “notoriously bad at math and buy for emotional and other reasons.” I can personally attest to the bad at math part, but the buying based on emotions can be explained through behavioral economics. Behavioral economics gives us insight into human behavior to…

Feb 26

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Powering Lives at Lowest, Convenient Cost

By Jeff Ihnen Energy Rant No Comments

I spent last week at the Association of Energy Services Professionals (AESP) National Conference in New Orleans. Our industry is in transition once again. Substantial changes are on the horizon. Let’s recap some highlights and lowlights in the utility and demand side management industries the past few decades. As nuclear power was going to be too cheap to meter in the 1970s, the oil embargo, Jimmy Carter sweater speech, and the Three Mile Island nuclear accident resulted in a radically different direction for our energy future. On the heels of the above, and the global cooling threat (check out the…

Sep 05

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Gozer the Disruptor: Replace or Be Replaced

By Jeff Ihnen Energy Rant One Comment

This Rant post is propelled by AESP goers. Several colleagues and I attended AESP’s summer conference for technology in Toronto last week. We landed numerous positive comments about this blog; some from people I don’t know or never met. I greatly appreciate these comments. They keep me fueled to keep pumping these out. These comments, along with the opening plenary, Embracing Disruptive Innovation, and my participation on AESP’s Board of Directors, pour the foundation for this post. But first, the antitrust clause: the following nutty views reflect those of the author only, and not those of AESP, Michaels Energy, or…

May 08

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Customer Engagement – Get With it or Get Lost

By Jeff Ihnen Energy Rant 2 Comments

This week, I am joined by someone who actually knows what she is talking about: Kristin Laursen, our Director of Marketing and Business Development. The two of us attended the Association of Energy Services Professionals (AESP) Spring Conference in Salt Lake City last week. The theme of the conference was marketing and customer engagement. Marketing and customer engagement is moving at Mach speed. Campaigns and outreach that may have gotten program managers over the finish line in time five years ago, three years ago, or even last year, are likely on the verge of obsolescence. My simpleton assessment is that…

Feb 20

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Energy and Demand Resource Soup

By Jeff Ihnen Energy Rant 2 Comments

The AESP 2017 National Conference is in the rear view mirror. While I was, unfortunately, not able to attend many sessions, most of that time was spent talking with a lot of people. I absorbed a lot of information and hopefully some wisdom. This post discusses the increasingly complex and intertwined electric grid. Shifting Role to Grid Managers My findings from the conference jive with a recent article I read in Public Utilities Fortnightly (PUF). The subject of that article was the Power of Innovation, a utility executive’s roundtable that included representatives from Edison International, Exelon, Duke Energy, Oncor, Southern…

Strategic Energy Management is Elvis

Kooky Car CEOs Catch Stockholm Syndrome

Efficiency – With Tectonic Power and Pace

Modern Efficiency and the Disappearing Clapping Seals

Guest Post: I Get So Emotional, Baby

Powering Lives at Lowest, Convenient Cost

Gozer the Disruptor: Replace or Be Replaced

Energy and Demand Resource Soup

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