What are the key ingredients to high-performing energy efficiency programs? That is the question that came to mind as I randomly grabbed an old edition of Public Utilities Fortnightly out of my six-inch stack of unread stuff. The article is entitled Top-Performing States in Energy Efficiency by Sanem Sergici with the Brattle Group. You can read that yourself, but I only got about three paragraphs in and realized how broadly one must observe to answer the question at hand. Administrators and Delivery Contractors What is an administrator? They are responsible for the results of a portfolio of programs for a…
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The old cliché, “be careful what you wish for because you just might get it”, may be coming to energy efficiency portfolios everywhere. It may be an unstoppable juggernaut that our industry will have little control over (pun alert). Instead, it will drive implementers into ambulance chasing and drive evaluators whacky. What is it? Controls, especially Wi-Fi consumer control systems. Millenials, bear with me as I write like an old man, but I will avoid discussions of snow, hills, and walking to school (if you’re over 40 and from the Midwest, you know what I mean). 1970s: AM radio, broadcast…
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Surprisingly, to me that is, it has been a long time since I wrote, or ranted, about the virtues and ignorance of those who think energy studies – audits, feasibility studies, assessments, - are a waste of time and money. This is your lucky day because I have a large, multi-year evaluation of a NYSERDA audit program that proves my point. The classic Neanderthal mindset is that doing energy studies for end users is a waste of money as they simply serve as shelf and desk clutter, and get tossed when the owner of the study moves to a different…
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A couple weeks ago, I wrote about nationalizing pieces of energy efficiency programs, namely technical resource manuals from which energy impacts (savings) and measure costs are derived. The post explained why this is a bad idea for a number of reasons. This week features chaos at the state level. It seems states with their energy efficiency policies are parallel to people who go to Washington DC and operate in the alternate universe inside the beltway. The longer they exist, the more schizophrenic and/or demented and/or dysfunctional they become. Utilities are forced, for lack of a better term, by regulators to meet…
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