Last week we revealed the five priorities of saving energy: Shut it off Slow it down, set it back (temperature, etc.) Reduce waste Retrofit or replace with efficient equipment Don’t be stupid Speaking of don’t be stupid, if you didn’t read last week’s post… In this case, “don’t be stupid”, is not easy – like telling a fighter pilot or neurosurgeon not to be stupid. But this is why I write. If it were easy, everyone would do it, and I wouldn’t have a job. Baby Steps To recap last week’s post, energy used for processes including refrigeration, air conditioning,…
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This post features concepts everyone can use to identify terrific savings opportunities, even if you did not take beloved calculus and thermodynamics. Let’s review a general hierarchy of typical energy efficiency families: 1. Shut it off 2. Slow it down, set it back (temperature, etc.) 3. Reduce waste 4. Retrofit or replace with efficient equipment Those are all wonderful and probably capture over 98% of portfolio savings. Even newer programs like behavioral, retro-commissioning, and strategic energy management merely pursue these items. What’s left? Smart design. I.e., 5. Don’t be stupid Or for the glass half full message, it would be…
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This week, I am joined by someone who actually knows what she is talking about: Kristin Laursen, our Director of Marketing and Business Development. The two of us attended the Association of Energy Services Professionals (AESP) Spring Conference in Salt Lake City last week. The theme of the conference was marketing and customer engagement. Marketing and customer engagement is moving at Mach speed. Campaigns and outreach that may have gotten program managers over the finish line in time five years ago, three years ago, or even last year, are likely on the verge of obsolescence. My simpleton assessment is that…
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We are taking a break from exergy this week, and we are going to examine what is happening in distorted electricity markets around the country. This will be somewhat of a sequel to Regulating Deregulation and Wind's Other Big Subsidy. Too much of a good thing, or as they say, unintended consequences, is pushing the grid in some places toward instability. By the way, I scoff at the term “unintended consequences.” There are only two types of consequences: intended and ignorant ones.Utility Dive notes that Texas (Electricity Reliability Council of Texas – ERCOT) and the Southwest Power Pool are the…
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Last week we introduced exergy and at least one application of it in a building. First, let me make something very clear, for the refrigeration cycle, if I’m cooling beer or freezing leftovers, the heat that is sucked out of those masses is rejected somewhere else. For refrigerators and freezers, it is rejected to the room in which they exist. For air conditioning, most commercial refrigeration, and all industrial refrigeration, it is rejected outside – unless, it is captured for useful heating. Commercial HVAC For commercial HVAC, if CONsultants don’t think holistically about the entire heating and cooling needs, and…
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Exergy is a sexy word (maybe only to energy nerds), but it represents a vital class of measures and opportunities as we sprint head-on into the game changer (cliché alert) that will be the post-gravy-train-of-lighting-retrofit-era of energy efficiency. Pay attention!Exergy, also known as availability, is the total useful energy that can be captured before a system comes into equilibrium with the surroundings. Equilibrium can be as simple as a mass coming to rest. Potential Energy Consider a hydropower plant. The potential energy is in the form of elevated water on one side, the reservoir, and a shallow stream for whitewater…
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The City of Chicago recently issued its annual report on commercial building benchmarking. I pick on Chicago because (1) its upper-Midwest location has a climate like that of many of our readers, and (2) because it uses ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager, which I addressed several times before. With Portfolio Manager, everybody seems to get a trophy, and results are troublesome to me. Also, for reference, I published this post last fall, pointing out the failures of energy codes to move the energy intensity needle. Using data from the Energy Information Administration, that post showed that buildings built in the past…
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The Donald has been in office long enough for an assessment of performance, if I may use that term, on energy policy. States Matter Most, but not all, of us are employed under a patchwork of state policies. State houses and executives set the policies, and utility commissions see to it that the policies are carried out. States tend to zig when the federal government zags. It doesn’t happen overnight but over the course of several years. For instance, the Obama administration was anti-coal, anti-carbon, and as a result, purplish-red (raspberry, I guess) states, including Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin, pulled…
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I have written rather popular articles on critical thinking and climate change in greenhouse gas basics, tribal views (non-critical thinking) on climate change, and others. This week, I am going to bring the two together, with this article from the New York Times supplying the data/ammunition for this post. Survey Development Survey development is difficult for getting facts, such as doing phone surveys to assess what types of equipment, appliances, lighting, and so forth energy users have in their homes. The questions need to be carefully considered, including whether customers will have a clue regarding the equipment in question. For…
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The mélange of terms in the title of this post have been used by others to explain power factor. Most of them are awful analogies, and that is what sparked me to attempt to figure this out for myself and explain it, both with more relevance and clarity. But first, why does power factor matter? Because, contrary to what most people would say, bad power factor wastes energy and requires a larger capacity for generation and delivery of electricity. Mathematical Power Factor A couple weeks ago in Power Factor and Toenail Fungus, I provided a brief overview of what causes…
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