Well here I am again – a prisoner in the penitentiary that is the Minneapolis Airport. Northwest Airlines now part of Delta Delta Delta can I help ya, help ya, help ya (YAH! – you can get me the hell out of here) can’t fly through a swarm of mosquitoes without being delayed. This is the burnt crust on the dessert that was otherwise a great week. And as usual, I can’t help but sit here and ignore the MASSIVE amount of energy gobbled up by this place. It’s a bowl of hot soup outside. It is about 68F inside and the baseboard heaters are roasting away. Typical. If we couldn’t cost effectively save 2 million kWh and a hundred thousand therms per year in this place, I would be ashamed.
OK. That’s a lead-off mini rant.
This past week I attended the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy’s Summer Study (i.e., summer camp) at Asilomar (a-SILL-oh-mar) conference grounds in Pacific Grove, CA. It is quite a massive conference with about a thousand energy efficiency professionals from all over the country and a few international attendees. The Aussies always seem to have a contingency there.
The conference features 11 panels (which I would call tracks) on residential and commercial issues including (1) residential technologies, design, performance and analysis and (2) residential program design, implementation, and evaluation. Then there are the same two tracks for commercial facilities and programs. There is one for utility programs, market transformation, human and social dimensions (behavioral issues and programs), and four others.
It’s a great conference featuring many great presentations. Each track features six papers per day for five days: 11 x 6 x 5 = 330 papers, roughly! Most of the ones I attended were at least partially interesting to me but on average were very good. But this is the Energy Rant. There has to be something wrong or what’s the point?
There are two comments / complaints that I had generally for many of the presentations. First, I thought the military, followed by engineers, were the worst offenders of overusing acronyms. No. There were plenty of acronyms flying every which way. I’ve been in the industry 15 years and there were many that were new to me. If you’re like me, as soon as somebody says something and I’m thinking to myself “what the heck does that mean”, I’m stuck there trying to figure out what HIM means while the presenter drones on. HIM is not the opposite of HERS in case you were wondering, but most people in the industry I am sure don’t know what HERS is either. Some examples (and these are just the tip of the iceberg):
- One presenter was talking about RCAs. Somebody in the audience asked what an RCA was and the response was, “it’s a diagnostic tune-up”. What? How do you get RCA out of that? As it turns out it’s a refrigerant charge and airflow maintenance program for residential. We’ve been evaluating those for the past two summers but I hadn’t heard this term before.
- HIM = high impact measures. I might file a gender bias charge here. Why not highly efficient retrofit? Does NOW know about this?
- EEPS = energy efficiency portfolio standard. In case you’re still wondering, this is the guide for soup to nuts energy efficiency programs – plan, design, develop, promote, implement, and evaluate.
- MHP and how it integrates with CHP and RTP. OK. I know CHP = combined heat and power so MHP is something like that. Maximum heat and power? No. Mandatory hourly pricing, which is a tariff or billing method used in the state of New York. RTP = real time pricing. As I understand it, MHP is the same as day ahead hourly pricing, which is just what it sounds like – Hourly prices are set for the next 24 hours so large customers that this applies to can plan rather than get charged in “real time”.
- CPP-D. While I sat in this one I figured out most of this – critical peak pricing – fairly early on. What the ___ is the D for? Never figured it out until I got home and read the paper. Default, as in critical peak pricing default rate. Is this a default like defaulting on bond payments or default like the automatic standard value? Neither. It’s a rate, as in tariff. And by the way, if they had used CPP-DR for the whole thing it would really be confusing because DR is “default” for demand response. The acronyms are getting used up, folks. Coin ‘em while you can!
- CRC. This one relates to the CPP-D above. It is customer reservation charge. This is the 50% of the customer’s summer peak protected from CPP rates.
- CEAC. This one cracks me up. It is clean energy application centers. What the ____ does that mean? This was used in the presentation but does not appear in the paper. The paper also fails to even explain what it is.
Ok. That’s about enough of those things. This is only a small fraction of the acronyms found in the presentations and papers that I attended/read, and by definition, I attended less than 10% of them even though I went to all that I could.
Another thing I noticed is that many of the presentations/papers were analyzing the bajeebas out of the finest details like air handling systems and daylighting. This included what every terminal (zone or room) unit was doing every minute of the day versus what the controls was telling the stuff to do and how to model venetian blinds in a daylighting application. Five minutes into these presentations I’m thinking, what on earth are you going to do with these data? I’ve contended before that using ice cores and tree rings to determine what the climate was doing a million years ago is like measuring your garage with the car odometer. Whatever you say! These studies, however, are like measuring the distance from San Francisco to New York with a ruler. Just the opposite.
Lastly, I can’t help but beat on government again, because it’s so easy. The EPA was a platinum sponsor. Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) were silver sponsors. Sponsorship is for advertising. Why are these federal agencies spending my money and their competitors’ money to promote themselves? All they have to do to stay in business is be sure to always spend at least 100% of their annual budgets and keep asking for more. And results? Fuggedaboutit! Vinnie and Joey take care of that.
To end on a high note, California is a great and beautiful state. It’s just too bad Sacramento, which is also a great city, has it so screwed up to the point that industries are fleeing left, right and sideways.
I conclude everything causes cancer in CA. My motel room contains materials that are proven to cause cancer and birth defects. No kidding. This was posted right outside my motel room door. If you read the literature that comes with your car, that too causes cancer and birth defects. I would say the driver is more likely to cause severe injury or death than the upholstery. These are symptoms of a psychotic state government.
So that wasn’t a high note. If you haven’t visited California’s central coast, do it. From Big Basin (ancient redwoods and sequoias) to Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Big Sur. There are sandy beaches, unbelievable forests, rocky shores with tide pools with all kinds of wildlife, and some of the best farmland in the world – strawberries, artichokes, and garlic to note a few. There is very little syrupy crappy tourist pits along the way too so it keeps the riffraff out – or maybe there are no tourist pits because there is no riffraff?? It is colder than most people imagine, this year more than average per the locals. It never got above 65F and mornings featured fog and about 52F. Perfect weather in my world.
