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Mar 23
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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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Nov 17
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Retro-Commissioning v Commissioning; Similar Purposes, Vastly Different Approaches

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant One Comment
Last week, I was reviewing a scope of work for retro-commissioning, also cleverly known as RCx – and it moved me to pulling hair out by the fistful.  “That’s it”, I thought.  “I’m going to relieve my rage on next week’s Energy Rant.”First, there is the infamous flow/process chart for completing an RCx project.  As you may infer, I am not fond of the “Planning Phase”.  In fact, it seems this process was developed by a program implementer for the program implementer (to spend more time and thus make more money while achieving little more than wasting time). Retro-commissioning has…
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Jun 23
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Cooling System Temperature Control- No Savings

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 5 Comments
Let’s skip the energy supply side this week and talk about thermostats used for cooling. Let’s broaden the discussion to include both programmable thermostats and “smart” or “learning” thermostats. The Nest falls into the latter group. Speaking for the Nest, which I have controlling my heating and cooling, it will learn user patterns by when, and to what level, the user changes temperature setpoints. It also secretly learns the users’ occupancy patterns by keeping an infrared eye on them. For instance, if the thermostat is in a heavy traffic area, it will learn to expect a lot of traffic, and…
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Mar 03
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Decoupling – A Love Story

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Utility Stuff 2 Comments
Perhaps I am naïve, but to be more effective it seems interveners would do well to understand motives of profit-driven enterprises and their customers.  Consider, for example, this recent article in Midwest Energy News lamenting CenterPoint Energy’s withdrawal from decoupling.  You may recall a post I made eons ago where I described the perverse impact of decoupling on prices for consumers.  Allow me to recap. Utilities have fixed cost of hardware and labor to deliver energy to customers – poles, wires, pipes, transformers, compressors, trucks, etc.  This stuff makes up the rate base and fixed cost of energy delivery.  They…
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Sep 16
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Building Energy Codes – A Blutonian D-

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 4 Comments
Building energy codes and the legal age for buying and consuming alcoholic beverages have something in common.  If you read this blog regularly, you probably know what it is.  In case you are new, I will explain. I’ve been off the college campus scene for about a quarter century, so I can’t speak for students today. However, back in the day it seems we started classes on Thursday and Friday, received our syllabi, joked around a while, and then immediately launched into a three day weekend for Labor Day.  The regents must have been young or dumb because that does…
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Jul 29
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Project Performance and Customer Satisfaction – Three Strikes and Yer In, or Out

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Last week I attended the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy’s (ACEEE) Summer Study for Industry, which had excellent content, but one phrase prompted me to this week’s topic, one that’s been simmering a while in my gray matter.  Due to multitasking and poor note-taking, I don’t remember the phrase exactly, but it was something to the effect of the rule of three.  My version is when it comes to project performance and customer satisfaction (and many other things), three in a row has meaning. Fortunately, the conference featured heavy doses of benchmarking, planning, and continuous improvement, which is…
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Mar 25
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Industrial Energy Efficiency – Stay Out of the Ditch

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant One Comment
To win people over and get them to join your cause, it is best to not clobber them over the head as the beginning of this article for the top five measures for industrial energy efficiency does.  The first paragraph reads like a senator’s stump speech with selective facts that deliver a distorted message.  To wit, “the United States ranks first in energy wastefulness among developed nations”.  Presumably, China is not a developed nation.  Moreover, is waste measured in energy consumption, waste, or either of those per unit of economic output? The next statement is that industry is responsible for 30%…
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Jan 28
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Holy Cow, Fumble!!!!

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Yale and Environmental Defense Fund socialites have published an article for Nature  (you can purchase the article with a federally backed low-interest loan or borrowing against the negative equity in your home) indicating that rebound effect is over-hyped.  Rebound, snapback, backfire, fumble, boot, bogey, crash, and other terms are used to describe consumers’ change in behavior to use efficient energy consuming products more because they are cheaper to operate. Sometimes one needs to use perverse reasoning beyond social norms (no not that) to shoot down illogic.  First, consider that behavior change is the golden pinnacle of any energy efficiency portfolio. …
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Jan 07
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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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Dec 31
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Refrigerator Sitcoms and Lethal Toaster Ovens

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 3 Comments
I’ve read enough energy-saving tip lists to fill a Webster’s dictionary.  In this rant, I dissect some common ones, some uncommon ones, and provide some myself. Cook with small appliances – toaster oven, slow cooker, electric skillet:  I would strongly advise against a toaster oven because (1) using it to make toast wastes energy – a “slice” toaster evenly toasts bread with coils in the closest proximity possible minimizing wasted heat, (2) my experience with toaster ovens for baking things like quick bread is that they burn.  The temperature and coil proximity (ironically) is too close to what is cooking,…
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All things energy. That’s our jam.

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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