Skip to main content
Category

Energy Efficiency

Pricing PV Energy; The Tomato Wins!

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Renewable Energy 2 Comments
This post is brought to you by Midwest Energy News; in particular, the opinion piece, Time For Monopoly Reform in Minnesota.  It is written by Tea Partier Debbie Dooley from Atlanta.  You may have heard or read that the Tea Party and solar advocacy groups (a strange alliance) have been singing photovoltaic folk songs around southern campfires. I am not anti-renewable, but I am very much anti-misinform and mislead.  That is what The Energy Rant is all about.  To prove my love of renewables, as I was driving back from my mother’s over the Fourth of July weekend on a…
Read More

Utility Investors: Chillax and Find a Mirror

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Utility Stuff No Comments
The Energy Rant blog, in general, could be considered the sausage factory of energy efficiency; exploring the inner workings and realities of the business.  Everyone else writing about energy efficiency is talking about the delicious bratwurst and hotdogs one might get at the ballpark.  This week, however, we will explore EE from the utility shareholder perspective, in the sausage room, rather than the ballpark frank of conventional wisdom. To further define the sausage room of energy efficiency, this time I begin with a white paper by ACEEE,Policies Matter: Creating a Foundation for an Energy-Efficient Utility of the Future.  One gist…
Read More

Evaluation, Measurement and Verification; From a Neander Cave

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
A title like Lies, Damned Lies and Modeling: Energy Efficiency’s Problem With Tracking Savings sounds like a natural fit for The Energy Rant, and in this regard, it did not disappoint.  Contributions to the article can be summarized as follows: professionals serving the evaluation, measurement and verification (EM&V) business are Neanderthals.  Having just discovered the open flame, these grunting upright creatures appear to be working on their next great discovery: rolling objects. Okay smarty pants.  The challenges for EM&V professionals can be boiled down to two words: Money Access  Little Money The article describes the fact that too much EM&V…
Read More

Low-Income Programs; Kool Aid and Happy Face Rugs

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 2 Comments
Last week, we learned about lost revenue adjustment mechanisms, also known as LRAM.  I said, “Many people don’t seem to be that interested in the right answer in many jurisdictions.”  This week, I investigated another paper posted to the University of Chicago’s website, authored by two University of California-Berkeley economics professors and one University of Chicago professor.  Collectively, these flunkies have PhDs in economics from MIT, UC-Berkeley, and Princeton.  The paper drew hellfire from some in our industry, because, uh, they don’t like anyone messing with the Kool Aid punch bowl. The paper investigates the claimed savings for the Federal…
Read More