This Geography guy really needs to get out of the classroom and the city for that matter once in a while. Modern agriculture is probably demagogued and more poorly understood than energy efficiency, and since this opinion piece addresses both I will dispense with its shredding. I grew up on the farm 30 years ago in southern MN and northern IA, and I stay in touch spending a week each year reliving my childhood farming days. My elder brothers still run the place. They grow maybe 2,500 acres of corn and soybeans and raise and market maybe 25,000 hogs per…
Read More
We interrupt this rant for this special announcement. Our cold spring in the northern plains is wreaking havoc in the form of tornadoes in the southern and middle parts of the country. I think the weather phenomena had a lot to do with my interest in mechanical engineering. Growing up on the farm in the flatlands, I had seen a great many black clouds approaching on the horizon. As they drew closer, they would either brighten to a lighter gray and rain, or they get ugly. If the approach is led by a dark band of clouds followed by blue-green…
Read More
As my crop of silver hair continues to expand, I have become more of a historian, particularly when it comes to cause and effect, and peoples’ behavior. I step back and observe what is happening and what has happened as a result of this or that policy. Theories are nice, and they may be well thought out and make sense but if they fail miserably, should we double down and try it again? Policy isn’t like launching rockets or breaking the speed of sound. For those things, you can test, observe failure/problems and make adjustments. For example, Chuck Yeager was…
Read More
Now that I’m an old man, defined as being over 40 years of age, career half over, graduated from college 20 years ago, kids of classmates are graduating from high school, kids born when I was partying in college are graduating from college, and other depressing facts, I can say experience in anything can be almost worthless and in some cases, it is worth less than nothing. At Michaels, we have interfaced with engineers, particularly ones who were in sales and it was stunning how little they knew about buildings, control systems and how equipment and systems use energy. It…
Read More
Having been in the EE industry for 15+ years and regularly attending conferences around the country (for just a few years), I find myself being volunteered to contribute to these conferences with planning, presenting papers, and “peer” reviewing others’ papers. The planning, peer reviewing, and being peer reviewed are learning experiences as I gain awareness of how others think and what they find interesting and important. I say “awareness” and not necessarily “understanding” because quite frankly, the way some people think, baffles me. For example, I was talking with a gun collector the other day and prior to this I…
Read More
It seems like every time I visit my mother, at some point, maybe the night I arrive or the next morning over coffee, she starts dumping the local rubbish on me. So and so are “separated”. What’s her name is pregnant. Jimmy got busted for a DUI. Ronnie has cancer. I went to four funerals last week. And always something about my brothers, who as you may know run a large farming operation, are taking too much risk or can’t possibly afford this or that $300,000 piece of equipment. Being the anti-gossip and direct guy that I am, I ask,…
Read More
The thing that pushed me over the edge this week was a fine blog post by Elisa Wood. My comment was that Gavin Newsom’s list of jobs created by resources including coal, nuclear, wind, solar, and EE, does not include return on investment. Only EE has return on investment for the end user. All other sources cost the end user, not save the end user money. But this is not the topic of the day. I am not a tech geek. I just want things that are stable, reliable, and relatively fast and snappy. I will pay for it. I…
Read More
State and federal budgets are headed for the cliff to varying degrees with few exceptions. Here in Wisconsin, we’ve had the Battle Royale fight to the death cage match with the repubs on one side and the unions on the other while the dems were hiding out in a witness protection plan. Meanwhile at the federal level, we are on a dangerous trajectory unseen in my lifetime. People have whined about the deficit and debt since my adolescence – the Miracle on Ice days against the Soviet Union. I kept saying, “It’s not a problem. It’s not a problem.” Why? …
Read More
This was a dopey high school cheer of my older brother’s and sister’s sporting days in high school. “Go bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. Go bananas!” How lame. What does it mean? I much preferred, “Watermelon. Watermelon. Watermelon rind. Look at the scoreboard and see who’s behind. You! You! You! You!” This was always led by the rowdy crowd after the opposing team’s cheerleaders would do a dopey skit, like the banana thing. One of the first posts I wrote was Renewable NIMBY, that people purport to be in favor of renewable energy unless they have to look at it or pay for…
Read More
We, as an industry, have our work cut out for us in coming years. Months ago an industrial energy efficiency consortium that puts on training events held a two-day workshop on motors. Motors! Talking about the common Swingline stapler for two days would be more interesting. The efficient motor uses less energy in the amount of the difference in the reciprocals of old minus new. I.e., (1/eff – 1/eff). Multiply by nameplate horsepower then by 0.5 (don’t ask, just do it) then by annual hours of use. Bingo! There are your savings. Two days! There are more complex issues that…
Read More
