Two weeks ago, I wrote that efficiency programs are designed to be evaluated. They are not designed to be effective. That quote, or paraphrase, came from the great Val Jensen, Exelon’s Senior VP of Strategy and Policy, as spoken at AESP’s 2019 Annual Conference. Val is great because he is genuine, authentic, and tells it like it is, at least as far as a utility spokesperson can take it. I’d love to hear him if we could remove his utility filter. That would be fantastic. There would be sufficient material for thousands of Rants. Like many things with which I…
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It is mid-June, and strangely here in the northern Midwest we have experienced virtually no warm, humid weather yet this year. The weather can flip like a switch from a pattern of rain and clouds of the past several weeks to one that is hot and humid with little precipitation. Now is a good time to talk about relative humidity and moisture. Relative humidity is something everyone knows about but hardly anyone understands. How many times have you heard “It was 100 degrees with 99 percent humidity?” I guarantee these conditions are 100% impossible, at least in the ambient outdoors,…
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Last week I read AESP Board Chair, Sara Van de Grift’s monthly letter/email to AESPers (if you are not a subscriber, get with it: aesp.org). She describes diminishing opportunities for energy efficiency due to the industry’s addiction to widget-based programs {my phrase), but that there are still opportunities with homes and commercial and industrial facilities operation, and of course a few widgets here and there, like the Nest thermostat. She ends by asking, “Are you up to the challenge” ?Hell yeah! I’m also thinking that capturing savings isn’t the challenge in my view. The challenge is convincing stakeholders, particularly governors…
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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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State and federal budgets are headed for the cliff to varying degrees with few exceptions. Here in Wisconsin, we’ve had the Battle Royale fight to the death cage match with the repubs on one side and the unions on the other while the dems were hiding out in a witness protection plan. Meanwhile at the federal level, we are on a dangerous trajectory unseen in my lifetime. People have whined about the deficit and debt since my adolescence – the Miracle on Ice days against the Soviet Union. I kept saying, “It’s not a problem. It’s not a problem.” Why? …
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