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energy rant with doug scott

Special Rant Vlog with Performance-Based Ratemaking Guru, Doug Scott

By Energy Rant No Comments
This week, we’re continuing our discussion on GEBs (Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings) with our special guest Doug Scott. Doug is the Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at Great Plains Institute and is a great resource for performance-based ratemaking which is a key component of GEBs for both customers and utilities. Check out our fun conversation with Doug!
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carbon reduction

Opening Salvo to Grid-Interactive Buildings

By Energy Rant No Comments
To help accommodate intermittent renewable solar and wind power generation while minimizing grid and supply-side energy costs, the Department of Energy, its national labs, and our industry are exploring possibilities to use buildings as grid resources. The acronym de jour is GEBs, for grid-interactive, efficient buildings. What about the I? A focus group decided that gebs sounds better than giebs; therefore, GEBs. Potential GEB benefits include: Accommodating large penetrations of renewable energy by shaping loads to take excess power when it is available for use when it is not available. Decarbonization. Energy conservation. Less-expensive energy supply. More customer control over…
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Industrial Efficiency – Beyond the Librarian

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant One Comment
Sometimes I go into writing a rant with a blank slate.  I’m not fired up about anything.  It’s true.  Then I reach for a report in my pile and start to read the executive summary.  The ideas start falling off the shelf into my cart.  This week’s post is actually sponsored by the Department of Energy:  Industrial Energy Efficiency: Designing Effective State Programs for the Industrial Sector (I think they could use some help with pithier titles). A few weeks back, I wrote about nonsensical reasons industrial customers want to opt out of energy efficiency programs.  That was specifically in…
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Green Jacket, Cigar, Gold Rings, and Disneyland

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, LEED, Renewable Energy, Stimulus, Sustainability One Comment
I attended the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance last week and it was an interesting environment, to say the least.  This was the 4th or 5th MEEA conference I have attended. Behavioral stuff is an up and coming topic/issue in the EE industry.  I am planning to do a rant that to save energy, people have to give a crap.  I just need something to push me over the edge.  After all, just about all lasting energy efficiency requires behavioral changes.  Only inanimate, stationary, non-energy consuming stuff, e.g., insulation, doesn’t require behavior change.  Everything else has a behavioral component for maintenance,…
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Playing with Fire

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Stimulus, Tax Stuff 3 Comments
I was pretty much like every other 12 year old boy.  I liked fire, explosions, and crashes.  If you think I’m crazy, why are movies sometimes beginning to end filled with the same?  Enough said.  Growing up on the farm there were always plenty of things to burn.  One time I asked my dad if I could burn an old cattle feeder that we no longer used.  No problem. You never see these things anymore but they were wood structures, like a weekend cabin that could withstand an F4 tornado, except it was all wood, nails and fasteners – solid…
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