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lighting

Strategic Energy Planning

By Energy Rant No Comments
I don’t think my mom played football, but she thought she knew how to take down a ball carrier. “Hit them low! Take out their legs.” This was her solution to arm tackling up high where the defender grabs on around the shoulder pads and goes for a ride – like a weakling trying to take down a steer. Bulldoggin, I think it’s called. Why would you bulldog rather than say, use a lariat? Boys will be boys, I suppose. Come to think of it - I don’t think bull riding accomplished anything useful down on the ranch either. I…
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energy

Soaked to Crisp Threats and 100% Renewable Energy

By Energy Rant No Comments
Last week I attended the International Energy Program Evaluation Conference, IEPEC, which I had affectionately dubbed the Energy Program Evaluation Asylum, EPEA, six years ago. Back then, I called it the Asylum because it included annual scrums over subjects such as net-to-gross (NTG) studies, free ridership, and so on. The Family Feud is Dead You’ll never believe this, but the industry seems to have moved on. The only time I heard “NTG” was during the opening-night entertainment exercise – a gameshow wannabee modeled after the Family Feud. “One hundred evaluators were surveyed. The top six answers are on the board.…
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Driving Ms. Free Rider Daisy

By Energy Rant 3 Comments
Sitting on high levels of energy efficiency program design and evaluation provides a wonderful perspective and results in some astonishing epiphanies. Warning – data-backed bluster straight ahead. New Construction Programs We study the performance of new buildings all the time, whether it is for evaluation or looking for great retro-commissioning opportunities. Nothing provides a better opportunity for retro-commissioning than a stock of new buildings, whether they filtered through a new construction program or not. The chart below features energy performance of new buildings that went through a new construction program. We implement, and we evaluate projects nationwide (don’t bother guessing…
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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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Widgetman

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government 4 Comments
Widgetitis: Obsessive compulsion to build canals with teaspoons – or meet program goals with showerheads. A short story about economist Milton Friedman from The Wall Street Journal sort of sets the stage for effectively meeting program/portfolio goals in big chunks: “Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which…
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Chester the Energy Advisor

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Utility Stuff No Comments
We are from the government and we are here to help.  Kaboom!  That would be my door slamming in their collective faces. A number of years ago, and just recently I was reminded of it again, the federal government was selling it’s handouts to citizens – actually advertising free stuff, food or services are common.  This is perverted.  We do not have people starving in the streets of this country and this is a lock because if we did, the media would be all over it like flies on watermelon rinds.  Quite the opposite: we have a type 2 diabetes…
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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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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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2011 YIR

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
There’s only one thing worse than listening to the Beach Boys.  Give up?  Listening to the Beach Boys doing Christmas songs.  Scarface, which I just watched recently, better puts me in the holiday spirit than listing to a Beach Boys ditty. “Greedy little cockroaches.  Goodbye.  You wanna play games?  Ok.  I play with you.  You wanna play rough?  Ok.  Say hello to my LITTLE FRIEND!” – Tony Montana.  Deck the halls with boughs of holly falalalalala la la la la.  Ratatatatatat. If you hate year in review reports just quit right here because that’s what this is.  Our industry is…
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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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