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condensing boilers

Aug 02
Love2

Better than Best Program Practices

By Energy Rant No Comments
When Val Jenson talks, I listen. When he writes, I read. His recent article in Energy Central triggered an avalanche of ideas for a program, portfolio, and industry overhaul needed to get us there, which is the next level of savings equal to the last 25 years of lighting replacements and retrofits. Those days are gone, and unfortunately, the line of thinking that got us here (light bulbs) won’t get us there. Downstream Days are Numbered Let’s start with my favorite need for an overhaul, which is my greatest peeve – rebates and cash incentives to customers, known as a…
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Aug 17
Love0

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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Jun 22
Love0

Code Barriers to Efficiency; Sticking Customers with the Bee Gees

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Our industry really needs to call timeout; take a look around and ask, “what the hell are we doing?”  Build it and they will come?  No.  Build it, and they will be alienated and give it the middle digit. As noted most recently in a post on condensing boilers, I have written extensively about energy codes outstripping the reality of human flaws; specifically, complex design and control sequences that require a 10-year industry expert and a licensed professional engineer to even understand the intent of a vast swath of the code. Another perversion of the incomprehensible mumbo jumbo is the…
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Jun 01
Love0

Condensing Boilers – Test for Show, Ship for Dough

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 4 Comments
Everyone has probably heard at least one hundred or maybe a thousand light bulb jokes – the ones that disparage a class, gender, group, country, state, generation, etc.  The point is to make fun of the group in question because changing a light bulb is so simple, but it takes several doofuses in the disparaged group to do it.  Unfortunately, changing a light bulb is about the only energy retrofit measure that doesn’t get screwed up, usually.  Is this all we are capable of? In the past couple years, I have posted at least four Rants on energy code non-compliance:…
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Mar 03
Love0

Hannibal, Max and Me

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Retrocommissioning (RCx) No Comments
I hate electricity.  I love what it allows me to do but I just don’t understand it.  I sat through an in-house safety training session on arc flash, which I actually understood – there is a huge burst of energy through a “fault” that melts and actually vaporizes the copper conductor, which expands 7,000 times at Mach 2 and 1 million degrees F (made up numbers but the premise is correct).  It’s one heck of an explosion.  During a break I was asking our electrical engineers what the difference between a neutral and ground was, the flow of electrons, the…
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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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