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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In October 2011, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy delivered a report, “Follow the Leaders: Improving Large Customer Self-Direct Programs”. But before I discuss/interpret that, what is a self-direct program? Some large energy users wish to opt out of utility sponsored energy efficiency programs, and specifically they want to avoid paying the energy efficiency cost recovery rider. This particular rider is a surcharge, similar to tax on gasoline that is supposed to be used for roads. These large energy users state they can better invest this money in their own energy efficiency program – a self direct program.…
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Recently, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy issued a report, “The State of the Utility Bill” and I thought, “now there is a topic for plenty of discussion.” No, that was no joke, although there was an interesting finding that I found to be very hilarious: All of the ~100 bills analyzed in the study (100%) included the amount due to the utility from the customer. I would say not having the amount due would have its disadvantages. (that WAS a joke) I’ve witnessed and studied many issues regarding end user understanding of energy, energy consumption, and end…
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This will blow your mind. How many large power plants (500 MW) does it take to cook the thanksgiving turkey across the nation – just the ones cooked with electricity? Answer is provided below. Guess. Don’t be a loser. Guess. I’ve seen perhaps 100 ads for dust collecting contraptions that everyone including the buyers know will end up under the bed, in the closet, or basement, and finally onto the garage sale to somebody else who will decycle it. These include the things like the Ab Buster 5000 (just made it up), junk you sit on, junk you rock on,…
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This week I provide my own analysis of raw data to nail this Jell-O to the wall, and I’m done. It’s all good. Does anyone know what the “O” stands for? Orama? Jell Orama? First a recap from last week from which I got some blowback. But would you believe it if I told you I received substantially more support and backslapping from critics of climate change? As with any highly charged issue, readers/observers tend to attack on a hair trigger anything that challenges established positions and assign you to a broad group of in-duh-viduals to which you do not…
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I’ve moaned about global warming, aka, anthropogenic climate change, aka man-made global warming off and on over the past couple years so this week let’s get down to business. I’m all in favor of cost effective, as in benefits/cost ratio, reasonable environmental policy, resource preservation, and the minimization of irreversible damage. I wouldn’t be passionate about what I do or spend Saturday mornings doing this rant every week if I weren’t. I am also a professional engineer, which carries ethics of protecting the public health and well being. Well being would include financial soundness, which is where the cost effectiveness…
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Have you had your fill of Occupy Wall Street, (OWS) which has spilled over into dinky, surrounding, wannabe towns including one nearby with a population of a whopping 4,000? Apparently, these in-duh-viduals are protesting rich people and the fact that the rich keep getting richer and the poor, well, are the poor. My response: that’s life. Life isn’t fair. I don’t like the word “fair”. Rather, I like “not cheating”. “Fair” is too often used by whiners. Some of these OWSers are self described anarchists and communists. Oh yeah, there you go. That’s what we need is communism. There’s a…
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Recently, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) released its annual state rankings for energy efficiency. We noticed Wisconsin slipped a few pegs to 16 while Iowa remains near the top at 11. The top states for EE programs include the usual suspects: California, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York. As we discussed the rankings in house, my comment was, you probably don’t want to be in the top 10 on this list because those states are on the business-unfriendly end of the spectrum. They have big EE spending congruent with heavy regulation. So you guessed it; this rant…
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Montana, Theisman, McMahan, Simms, Aiken, Young, Favre, Elway, Brady, Johnson, Rothleshamburglar, Manning, Manning, Brees, Rodgers. Connection? If you know anything about football, you know these guys are quarterbacks, and probably know they all won a Super Bowl or three. If you don’t know anything about football, I commend you and I’ll get this prelude out of the way quickly. Virtually no team has won the Super Bowl with a mediocre quarterback. The only one I can think of is the Baltimore Ravens, somewhere around 2000. After looking it up: Trent Dilfer. How did this miracle occur? They played the Giants. …
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