Maybe it’s the Implementation Contractor Classic golden opportunities in retro-commissioning include fixing the root cause of the problem rather than trying to treat the symptoms. For example, it may be too cold in a space, so what should be done? Turn up the hot water temperature, of course! No. The problem could be any number of things like a new partition (wall) being installed, isolating one space with a diffuser from another space that has the thermostat. Or my favorite – parking a 1 kW printer under the temperature sensor. We were RCx geniuses in ha school. When our room…
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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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This week, or last week I should say, I spent considerable time researching for my upcoming paper, “Know-How and the Incessant Energy Diet”, to be featured at AESP’s National Conference in San Diego – get your tickets and reserve your seat today. In doing so, I read a few evaluation reports for retrocommissioning (RCx) – the program of choice for the paper. When I arrived at the attribution section, as in, what are the savings attributable to the program, I scoffed at the findings. For a refresher on terminology, refer to recent post Energy Program Evaluation Asylum. I didn’t scoff…
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Last week I was reading a couple regulatory dockets; one by a citizen and another by an intervener. They made some good points, including a situation of being locked out of the market in one’s own state, to which I replied, “Welcome to the party.” Both dockets had a ring of “market transformation”. Our friends at the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) define market transformation as, “The strategic process of intervening in a market to create lasting change in market behavior by removing identified barriers or exploiting opportunities to accelerate the adoption of all cost-effective energy efficiency…
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True or false: It’s easier to teach Pablo Picasso how to paint a house than it is to make a house painter into a Picasso-grade painter/artist. For the answer, keep reading. I was sitting in a session at last week’s AESP conference sipping my weak overpriced Starbucks when I almost sprayed a mouthful on the bystanders sitting in front of me. Not one, but two guys opined that it is easier to teach, for example, a refrigeration expert retrocommissioning than it is to teach a retrocommissioning/energy expert efficient refrigeration. Allow me to demonstrate with an example, a true story. A…
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Talk about an oxymoron. Years ago this was a favorite saying of my roommate and I as we lambasted dopey ads on TV, on paper, or over the airwaves. Fewer years ago, once I got into this energy efficiency profession, I was speaking with a utility energy-efficiency program guy who frequently interacts with regulators. This was during a stakeholder meeting for quantifying energy saving potential by sector and by technology. (technology = lighting, furnaces, chillers, etc.) Knowing buildings systems rarely work as they are supposed to, I asked, “Have you considered retrocommissioning (RCx) as an energy efficiency program?” His answer…
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