The masses want power on demand without interruption or failure. They want it at a practically negligible cost and more so every year, they want it without emissions or other unpleasant byproducts. In the upper Midwest, energy without emissions means wind energy. Wind energy sounds great. It’s “free”. No emissions. But it comes with a load of drawbacks compared to conventional sources of coal, nuclear, and natural gas. First, utilities can’t count on it for peak load generation. I searched a while for this and found nothing but the bottom line is there is no guarantee there will be any…
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If there’s one thing that most people painfully realized over the past couple years, it’s that there is risk in putting your money in anything in hopes of earning a return on investment. Riding a company into bankruptcy is an obvious one. I’ve done that several times by investing in fast-growing start-ups, initial public offerings (IPO) and stock options. Invest $3,000 for 100 shares of common stock and a few years later the company emerges from bankruptcy (isn’t that a cute phrase – it sounds like a daffodil blooming in spring but it’s more like rummaging for your charred silverware…
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For years, beginning in the 1990s through just a few years ago I considered ENERGY STAR® to be fluffy foo foo feel good goo – kind of like eating meringue smothered in corn syrup after chopping wood all day. Then they introduced the ENERGY STAR rated homes and ENERGY STAR rated commercial buildings. Both of these seem to be solid “programs”. ENERGY STAR for commercial buildings is based on energy intensity, which is energy consumption per square foot, climate region, type of facility and a few other things. To “earn the ENERGY STAR” commercial buildings must be in the 75th…
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One of the downsides of the surging awareness and growth in energy efficiency and renewable energy, in my opinion, are all the Johnny Come Lately energy services arms of giant corporations. Companies include Lockheed Martin, United Technologies, Eaton, and Chevron. These giants have revenues of $45 Billion, $53 Billion, $12 Billion and a meager $176 Billion, respectively. Poor Chevron’s revenue dropped from $275 Billion from the year prior. Maybe they should focus on their core business and leave the energy saving to the rest of us. Among these, only measly Eaton isn’t in the Fortune 100 (Eaton comes in at…
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A few years ago, I took my beloved Acura to the tire store for new tires. As I was sitting on their crappy molded plastic chairs at a Formica table working away on my laptop, a cheesy 20-something sales guy approached me and asked if I would like a free alignment. “I don’t have a problem.” “But it’s free. No obligation”, he goes on. “Ah what heck, go ahead.” He returned a few minutes later as I’m hammering away on my laptop and he says my wheels should be aligned because…whatever. I put on a scrunchy-face look and decide that…
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I was blindsided by the onset of daylight savings time this weekend. Wonderful. As though I don’t already have enough work to do before I can get outside to do some badly needed yard work - hack an hour off my weekend to boot. If I remember correctly, daylight savings time used to begin at the end of April and end on the last weekend of October. I also believe that these dates were moved to the current dates of mid March and early November as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This is supposed to save energy. …
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July 1992: Tickets for U2’s ZooTV show at RFK stadium in Washington, DC go on sale by Ticketmaster. The tickets are snapped up in a few hours, as fast as the phone lines could handle the traffic. This was before anyone knew what the internet was (no Al Gore jokes). Fortunately, a second date was announced and the roommate waited for the crack of 12:00:00 AM for a shot at the second batch, successfully. March 1, 2010: Federally funded rebates become available for efficient appliances in Iowa and Minnesota. Phone lines jammed with 10 times expected volume and internet traffic…
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I hate electricity. I love what it allows me to do but I just don’t understand it. I sat through an in-house safety training session on arc flash, which I actually understood – there is a huge burst of energy through a “fault” that melts and actually vaporizes the copper conductor, which expands 7,000 times at Mach 2 and 1 million degrees F (made up numbers but the premise is correct). It’s one heck of an explosion. During a break I was asking our electrical engineers what the difference between a neutral and ground was, the flow of electrons, the…
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Thousands, make that millions of people, including some smart people and congress people, when talking solutions for our energy efficiency low-carbon future are continuously babbling about “technology” that will save us all. Bill Gates says we need Miracles. Whadahyou talking about man? The White House announces $130 million for a new building energy efficiency effort - “a multi-agency initiative to spur regional economic growth while making buildings more energy efficient.” It will be “an Energy Innovation Hub focused on developing new technologies to improve the design of energy-efficient building systems”. Get ready for cold fusion to reemerge. Let me tell…
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Carbon taxes or cap and trade seem to have been a foregone conclusion in our industry of energy efficiency. I’m not so sure. I, like many other engineers in the energy efficiency business have always been cynical about global warming, which for some reason is now known as climate change. I would argue that a relatively small portion of anti-carbon people are true believers, that carbon is having or will have a significant effect on the climate and I have no problem with that. What I do have a problem with is the vast majority of people and organizations who…
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