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Jun 24
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energy management - Jeff's team

The Sport of Energy Management

By Energy Rant No Comments
Last week I proved that energy management is too much work and hassle for the average schmo, unless… That is the subject of this week’s post. I am the youngest of four kids who lived on a farm, so walking or even riding a bike to Jimmy’s or John’s house was not a viable option. Play with the siblings? Pffft. We competed in everything from board and ancient-video games to table tennis. I was damn good at that, by the way. We Want to Destroy You We didn’t have soccer at all, but thankfully, one parent/organizer in a nearby town…
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Nov 19
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Carbon tax – avoid the slow-mo sucker punch

By Energy Rant One Comment
If polling managers were competent, we would have election day rather than the election playoffs. For several days they were finding ballots in the usual places anyone normal would stash them, like elementary school classrooms, rental car trunks, vans, and the bottoms of bird cages. Most of the results are in, and the one that facilitates this post, the Washington state carbon tax, went down hard by about 10 percentage points. That is about as big as it gets for a statewide election. In February, I laid out the only carbon tax plan I would get behind, and that is…
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Nov 05
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Goals – Think Big or Step Aside

By Energy Rant One Comment
Featured Micro-Rant: Anyone who thinks or says, “We’re all efficient. The candy is gone. The cow is dry. The turkey is cooked. The apple tree died. It’s time to quit.” IS WRONG. (yes, that was me yelling) I believe, as demonstrated last week, that the greater savings and more cost-effective savings are waiting to be harvested through engagement and dispersion of timely, relevant information to energy users. Let us continue from last week with discussions of how to arm building operators to slay their own drift of energy hogs. Information, inspiration, a little direction, and a destination are very powerful…
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Oct 29
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Saving Energy – Lessons in Self Improvement

By Energy Rant One Comment
Last week in Behavior Freak, we explored the ratio of energy savings to beer consumption at the Delta house (answer = χ/∞ = 0 ). Specifically, that post explained why college students’ only motivation to save energy is currency, and absent currency, the needle does not move. This week we explore more interesting behavioral success with commercial building actors, also operating under no specific personal monetary drivers. The secret ingredient: timely, useful information, and maybe a little human nature – energy management success or failure for large office building facility operators. This post is based on a paper presented by Buildings…
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Nov 06
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Why Energy Efficiency? – Five Findings

By Energy Rant No Comments
This year ACEEE published a three-part series on why people and companies invest in energy efficiency. First, they provide some guesstimates of energy efficiency investment in the United States. Their researched estimates vary from $60 billion to about $120 billion, annually. Is this a reasonable guesstimate? According to their State Scorecard, program spending on natural gas and electric demand-side management programs held steady at about $7.5 billion in 2016. Check. The International Energy Agency pegs worldwide investment at $231 billion and about $40 billion in the U.S. Check. As a laugh test, $100 billion is a measly 0.5% of the…
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Mar 27
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Climate Change – Surveys and Truth Telling

By Energy Rant No Comments
I have written rather popular articles on critical thinking and climate change in greenhouse gas basics, tribal views (non-critical thinking) on climate change, and others.  This week, I am going to bring the two together, with this article from the New York Times supplying the data/ammunition for this post. Survey Development Survey development is difficult for getting facts, such as doing phone surveys to assess what types of equipment, appliances, lighting, and so forth energy users have in their homes.  The questions need to be carefully considered, including whether customers will have a clue regarding the equipment in question.  For…
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Aug 01
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performance contracting

Performance Contracting – Getting it Right; Avoiding #1 Matches

By Energy Rant 2 Comments
Per the Energy Services Coalition, energy service companies (ESCOs) that deliver energy savings performance contracts do the following: Identify and evaluate energy-saving opportunities Develop designs and specifications for construction Manage the project to installation and monitoring Arrange financing Train staff and provide ongoing services Guarantee savings will cover all project costs What’s not to like?A band of demons staked out in the contract details. I was reminded of this by this noteworthy article published in Buildings magazine. After discussing the author’s points, I will add plenty of my own guardrails to protect energy users from derailing over the cliff into…
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Nov 30
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Smart Grid Segmentation – Taking on the Dumb Meter Activists

By Energy Rant No Comments
I have written several times about smart grid hype; in particular about a year ago in Deaf and Mute Smart Meter. In that post, I described how utilities could truly treat demand response as a resource by using smart meter data, predictive consumption, and giving customers the power of their smart phone or tablet to participate in the infamous “utility of the future”. Customers want engagement, and they want control. Touché. A recent edition of Public Utilities Fortnightly (subscription) explained that indeed the smart grid is in a coma (my term). The title of the article is Smart Grid Isn’t Dead, but upon reading…
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Jan 16
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Replacing the Burger

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Sustainability 2 Comments
The race is on to develop and deliver next generation successful energy efficiency programs.  There is indeed innovation in the marketplace.  The days of what I call “hamburger selling” will end, probably in the next decade.  Selling EE in these cases is like selling hamburgers – who can sell the most and the cheapest hamburgers that people will eat.  The product is unsophisticated – lighting, primarily.  The market is huge and opportunities ubiquitous.  Marketing and selling the burger is the name of the game and will be for a few more years. In the past five years, energy efficiency has…
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Dec 12
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Opt Out Ruse

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, Utility Stuff No Comments
In October 2011, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy delivered a report, “Follow the Leaders: Improving Large Customer Self-Direct Programs”.  But before I discuss/interpret that, what is a self-direct program?  Some large energy users wish to opt out of utility sponsored energy efficiency programs, and specifically they want to avoid paying the energy efficiency cost recovery rider.   This particular rider is a surcharge, similar to tax on gasoline that is supposed to be used for roads.  These large energy users state they can better invest this money in their own energy efficiency program – a self direct program.…
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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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