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cannabis

Cannabis – A Big Issue Coming to a Utility Near You

By Energy Rant One Comment
Every kilogram of marijuana produced has a carbon bigfoot print of 4.3 metric tonnes (4.7 tons) of CO2. Marijuana production (U.S) consumes the annual electricity production of 1.7 million homes. Marijuana production consumes 1% of the nation’s electricity, and it’s growing rapidly. Data centers consume 3% of electricity worldwide. Mother Jones reports a growth module that four measly plants consume as much power as 29 refrigerators – probably not even efficient ones at that. Ok. Now that we have some context, you can bet this is a serious post. Public Service Announcement I can’t help but mention that older marijuana…
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building

Building Energy Simulations – More is NOT Better

By Energy Rant One Comment
Do you recognize the city shown?  It is Chicago.  How many twin buildings do you see?  Ok.  Consider downtown in your city.  How many twin buildings are there?  Ok. Why are they all different?  I would guess because if, say Donald Trump is going to build a $500-$1000 per square foot tower in the middle of all this, he wants an icon.  Wouldn’t you?  Besides, you’re not going to stop an architect from making it so anyway.  They want every building design to be a trophy for their wall.  Why not? Even schools, office buildings, college and university buildings, hospitals,…
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Clean Energy Disconnect Between Say and Do

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
This article, Americans could pay more for clean energy.  But will they really?, from Utility Dive reminds me of my own life experiences with squirrelly people.  They talk a good game, but where is the action?  It also reminds me of the folly in precise net-to-gross, or attribution studies. The article highlights findings of a University of Michigan study regarding consumer concerns over energy prices and the environment.  The findings include: Ninety three percent say energy prices are affordable. The threshold for unaffordable is a 140% increase! Energy markets are inelastic (I said this a long time ago). Self-reported willingness…
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Diet Soda and the Triple Bypass

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Last week I took a survey by AESP as they are gathering a pulse on where hacks like me think the trends are heading.  This coincided with last week’s rant regarding the end of lighting, and I essentially gave AESP a special edition rant in the survey, for free!  Unfortunately, I didn’t save my responses so I will just redo them.In my responses, I used parallels between energy efficiency and diet and health.  They are amazingly comparable.  Much of energy efficiency is akin to diet soda and low-fat ice cream.  The masses assume that, like doing a lighting retrofit, consuming diet…
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The End of Lighting

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 4 Comments
Believe it or not, I did not have a rant topic in mind going into Saturday morning – my rant writing time.  But the fog burned off quickly as a topic came into view – one that arose during the prior week.  Incidentally, I once heard a “meteorologist” instructor say he always scolded his students for saying fog “burns” off.  Instead, they should say the fog lifted.  What?  Fog is suspended water droplets, not vapor.  Water vapor in air, or as steam, is invisible.  When fog “burns off,” it changes from visible water droplets to invisible vapor, so while “burn…
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Flying Rodents

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 2 Comments
Before I get to this week’s rant, or I should say, this week’s primary rant, I need to share this with you.  Just before the holidays in Strange Magic,I tore into hands-free energy audit software.  All you need is an address and billing information and voila, there it is; an energy audit that tells you everything you need to know to cut your energy bills by a certain guesstimate. This week I came across an apparent competitor to the one discussed in Strange Magic, so I viewed their online charting and graphics.  They present analysis via bar chart for various…
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Strange Magic

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 2 Comments
A few weeks back I came across an energy blogger that referenced a software developer who would do an energy audit via address and energy bills.  Period.  Really? As my roommate and I used to say, “C’mon dude,” as in give me a big fat (or favorite expletive here) break.  We have done the address / energy consumption analysis many times but at MOST, we can do a decent job of benchmarking the facility against comparable ones but even this is difficult.  We can measure the building footprint with satellite images.  Easy.  The challenge is multi-story facilities, and I mean…
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Efficiency, Politics, Policy, and Economy

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government No Comments
Recently, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) released its annual state rankings for energy efficiency.  We noticed Wisconsin slipped a few pegs to 16 while Iowa remains near the top at 11.  The top states for EE programs include the usual suspects: California, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York. As we discussed the rankings in house, my comment was, you probably don’t want to be in the top 10 on this list because those states are on the business-unfriendly end of the spectrum.  They have big EE spending congruent with heavy regulation. So you guessed it; this rant…
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TGTBT You Can Believe In

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Utility Stuff 2 Comments
In 1984 was not like 1984, I talked about greeting change with gusto to win the future but with few specifics.  This post will cover one such “innovative” way for all stakeholders to benefit from energy efficiency. The typical utility-sponsored energy efficiency portfolio works like this: A small percentage of billed energy consumption, aka a rider is paid by customers to fund EE programs. Programs provide incentives for energy efficient equipment and in some cases services such as studies. Evaluators determine impacts attributable to programs and make recommendations for improvement. Regulators oversee it all to help ensure consumers aren’t being…
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Nicht Tee Kugel, Dos

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
This week I am testing an additional medium for the The Energy Rant; the cartoon.  Click here to try it out.  Send email comments with your thoughts regarding this mechanism to me at jli@michaelsenergy.com. Major barriers to EE for large commercial and industrial end users include; Lack of time Lack of expertise Lack of capital Risk aversion If you don’t think end users are short on availability, just ask them.  Most end users don’t have time to commit to energy efficiency projects and most of the rest think they don’t have time.  The ones who really don’t have time get…
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