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EE program

Market Transformation in Wonderland

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant One Comment
I just completed my draft of the forthcoming paper titled, “Know-How and the Incessant Energy Diet”, for the AESP 2014 National Conference.  In preparation for that, I thought, this is more work than writing Energy Rant blog posts because I have to scrounge for expert research to back my assertions because “this is the way it is – trust me”, isn’t good enough for a published paper.  Fortunately, I found plenty of ammo to make my point in a couple evaluation publications including this one conducted by our friends at Research into Action regarding the Southern California Edison Retrocommissioning program. …
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Best Practice Hamburger Helper

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant One Comment
The phrase that always has me reaching for a complimentary bag that can be found in the seat pocket in front of you on an airplane is “Best Practice”.  Are you following “best practice”?  Are you familiar with “best practice”?  Will you use “best practice”?  No. No. And no. Define best practice, anyway. What does it mean?  It’s something someone with many letters in their title block, who was paid a princely fee to declare, “This is the way it ought to be done”. Let’s examine a few deep thoughts on this concept. “Best practice” infers this is the best…
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Cabbage Patch iPad

By Energy Efficiency, Government, Renewable Energy, Sustainability No Comments
The thing that pushed me over the edge this week was a fine blog  post by Elisa Wood.  My comment was that Gavin Newsom’s list of jobs created by resources including coal, nuclear, wind, solar, and EE, does not include return on investment.  Only EE has return on investment for the end user.  All other sources cost the end user, not save the end user money.  But this is not the topic of the day. I am not a tech geek.  I just want things that are stable, reliable, and relatively fast and snappy.  I will pay for it.  I…
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Pregnant Snake Armpits

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, Stimulus No Comments
Although I don’t appreciate talking about it, we have a black list of companies and organizations for which we will not again partner with, work with, or bid their request for proposals.  What type of activities land somebody on this list? Companies or organizations that take our business development efforts and give it to someone else. We are working on retro-commissioning for a major player in the Midwest grocery market.  As with most of our investment-grade studies for energy retrofit or retro-commissioning, we like to use contractors to provide us with pricing because we expect they will get the work…
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