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As a company leader and owner, efficiency advocate, and AESP Board Member, I spend many of my waking hours and maybe many of my unconscious hours analyzing and processing behavior. What motivates people, and why do they choose what they choose? When I read a headline like White House Poised to Relax Mileage Standards –Read more

This is the second in a two-post series on electricity prices as impacted by deregulation and renewable energy penetration. Last week we explored deregulation in Regulation v Deregulation in True Color. This week, we examine the effects of increasing shares of renewable energy (like wind) being added to the grid. Again, the source for allRead more

Recent projects have led me to examine how deregulated electricity markets work. Since I am naturally curious, I wanted to investigate differences between electricity price performance of deregulated states versus those of regulated states. This week we examine the impacts of regulation/deregulation on pricing, and next week, we will look at the impacts that renewableRead more

10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who needRead more

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.Read more

I call your attention to the brilliant marvel of engineering shown in the image below. This model was developed before most of you were born. It is the little diesel engine that could – get 60 mpg, in my second car – a 1984 Ford Escort Diesel. Most people didn’t even know they existed, butRead more

Ohio lawmakers are again at the beck and call of deregulated power producing titans as they pass a nuclear and coal plant bailout at the expense of energy efficiency. They also dumped mandates for renewable resources. Almost simultaneously, the Institute for Energy Research (IER) published this brand new report, which compares levelized cost of electricityRead more

The topic of climate change is fascinating to me because I love to learn why people believe what they believe. I wrote last week that climate change policy is firmly and forever intertwined in political warfare. Does anyone stand alone on an island isolated from their tribe on anything?  Maybe five out of one hundredRead more

Climate change mitigation policies are firmly intertwined in hot political tribalism like school choice, abortion, taxes, and the minimum wage. I can think of few topics that are supported by both ends of the spectrum, although infrastructure spending and staying out of objectiveless wars seem to be two such things. We know things are atRead more

This week, we are taking a trip down easy street to explore what I called three years ago in DOE Pumping Standards a nauseating term, “low hanging fruit.” I love charts like the one below. Where can you find stuff like that? Well, the source vanished, except that I posted it in the Rant, itRead more

As the third in a series, we are going to wrap up the normalized metered energy consumption (NMEC) protocol groundwork this week. See the first and second posts to catch up in case you missed those. The first post covered new construction programs for which NMEC doesn’t apply because a baseline of normalized energy use[1]Read more

In theory, normalized metered energy consumption, or NMEC, would allow demand-side resources, whether dispatchable (demand response) or non-dispatchable (efficiency, demand rates, time of use, peak rates, etc.), to be precisely measured with equipment customers have already paid for – smart meters and the advanced metering infrastructure. It would work like this: What does the meterRead more