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Energy Efficiency

Sep 22
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Utilities and Using Less – Making the Abstract Concrete

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Utility Stuff 2 Comments
The utility business is fascinating and bizarre to me, and this can only mean I’m a hapless, pathetically boring person.  But that is what it may look like to the uninformed.  It’s like soccer, baseball, or Indy car racing.  If you don’t like these games/sports, you just don’t get it. First off, from business and investor perspectives, utilities are not growth stocks, and they haven’t been for decades.  Essentially, they are like US treasuries.  I learned this in a 1989 personal finance class.  Geezers invest in utilities for the steady dividend.  Clearly, I wasn’t interested in a paltry 7% yield…
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Sep 15
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Black Box Technology – Rarely Real; More Often Hocus Pocus

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Readers of this blog may think I’m a cynical, frumpy coot because I’m frequently noting the negative aspects of approaches, programs, technologies, and evaluation.  I feel obligated to do it because I’m a licensed professional engineer in half a dozen, or so, states.  Professional engineers, like doctors, are sworn to go about their profession in the best interest for the general well-being, health, and welfare of the public and those they serve (e.g. clients).  Well-being and welfare include not getting screwed over or caught by surprise – by revealing the whole story; the whole truth. Recently, E Source published a…
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Sep 08
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Utility Industry Disruption? Electricity is not a Movie

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 3 Comments
Because everyone reading this blog is in some way reliant on money from electric and/or gas utilities, I pay a lot of attention to the utility business and things like technological disruption and the utility death spiral.  I wrote about the utility death spiral back in April.  As a result of this fine article in greentechgrid, I’d like to bloviate about ballyhooed disruption. Disruption is an updated buzzword for “game changer”.  Prime example: Netflix to Blockbuster Video, Au Revoir. Greentechgrid notes a bunch of examples, and I have taken liberty to enhance the list by tabulating them into disrupted (Blockbuster)…
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Sep 02
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Clean Air Act 111(d) – Machete Required

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 3 Comments
Have you ever dreamt that you were tied down or in some way stuck and couldn’t move? Couldn’t get traction on foot or in a car?  Extremely tired?  Hordes of clueless people in your way?  Have you ever plowed through a marsh in waders or snow up to your waste?  If so, welcome to the sensation of getting to the bottom of EPA’s Clean Air Act 111(d) rule – the one in which it has declared jurisdiction over states carbon dioxide emissions.  An investigator  needs a machete, a bulldozer, snowplow, or explosives to get to the bottom of the muck.Before…
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Aug 25
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Energy Code (non) Compliance; Could it be… SATAN?

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
I spent last week at ACEEE’s Summer Study for Buildings, and one topic area I maximumly followed was energy codes and code compliance.  In past years, I would rank codes and standards second to the bottom, just above lighting for my priorities.  The reason for my sudden interest is the vaporizing gravy train of widgets, especially lighting and the need for other savings mechanisms.  Why not code compliance?States are updating energy codes willy nilly to the next rounds of ASHRAE 90.1 / International Energy Conservation Code.  As the Church Lady used to say, “Isn’t that special?”  The problem is the…
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Aug 18
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Energy Efficiency Potential Studies – Rulers, French Curves, and Tarot Cards

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant One Comment
ACEEE just released its first assessment of energy efficiency potential studies (potential studies) across the land – its first in 10 years!  Hallelujah!  I’ve been waiting all this time.  That may not be true, but certainly I am interested in potential studies, so this is a great excuse and opportunity to write about it. Potential studies are used by states and utilities to determine technical, economic, and achievable energy savings for purposes of setting savings targets and designing EE portfolios by assessing key technologies and market applications…among other things. Technical potential is the savings that could be achieved if all…
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Aug 11
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Energy Efficiency Baselines – Do or Don’t, Not This or That

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 2 Comments
This week’s post is brought to you by AESP’s 2014 Summer Conference, which went off last week in San Francisco.  I was speaking with a lifelong esteemed consultant from the Bay Area during the opening reception, and his disclosure was that regulators in a certain state are wrenching down too tightly on baseline assumptions.  At the same time, they are unyielding in their energy-saving targets.  This is a problem because it leaves customers that haven’t been picked over with artificial barriers.During the closing plenary, I noted a similar comment by Janice Berman from Pacific Gas and Electric.  Her comment, stated…
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Aug 04
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Electric Vehicles; I’ll Take the Bus, Thanks

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 2 Comments
When consumers are considering the purchase of an electric vehicle, what are they thinking?  Good question. I would be thinking, how can I fully utilize it and what are the limitations?  The limitation nearly anyone would consider include the limited driving range.  What can I do with the 70 mile or so cap between charges?  Obvious (I think) answers include driving to work and running errands around the city.  But there are a boatload of other owner and societal issues no one mentions – not this article from Green Tech Media, which is based on this report from the Edison…
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Jul 28
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Why Is Electricity Use Flat? – A Different Look

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, Utility Stuff 3 Comments
As readers of this blog are sure to know, electricity consumption growth has leveled out and essentially disappeared in recent years. This is celebrated, but I say, beware of what you wish for – kind of like winning the lottery. It may seem wonderful until reality and the unintended consequences set in. But I want to do a deeper dive into why energy consumption in buildings, in particular electricity, is on the fall. As ACEEE reported back in February of this year, Why is Electricity Use No Longer Growing, efficiency is a significant contributing factor. I agree. But I also…
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Jul 21
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DC Circuit’s Smackdown of FERC re Demand Response

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant One Comment
I’ve written dozens of proposals, and I’ve read dozens and dozens of requests for proposals from all sorts of entities including states, local governments, private corporations, and of course, utilities.  With this comes scope of work requested, required proposal content, rules, terms and conditions, and due dates.  I always consider content of the RFP to mean what it says, and if it isn’t clear what it means, either ask a question via the process detailed in the RFP, or ignore it and work it out later, or it is a minor thing – irrelevant in the big picture. Enter the…
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All things energy. That’s our jam.

We talk a lot about energy – from the serious to the satirical.

All things energy. That’s our jam.

We talk a lot about energy – from the serious to the satirical.

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