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Energy Rant

Petroloons

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, Tax Stuff, Utility Stuff No Comments
A few weeks back in Evil v Clueless, I attempted to clarify populist, rhetorical BS that crops up in times of rising gasoline prices. True to form, a couple really stupid death-spiral proposals have surfaced: ending “tax breaks” for oil companies and reigning in speculators. Bashing big oil has surfaced this gem again: we need to end tax breaks/subsidies for big oil. The angry mob of medieval grunts raise their clubs and swords to the air and roar approval. The “tax breaks” they are talking about are the same ones every company in the US uses and rightly so: depreciation…
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Saints Are Marching In

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Utility Stuff No Comments
One of the most rewarding aspects of our business is ensuring people get it right and customers get the legitimate energy and monetary savings they should be receiving.  My answer to “why should we pick you?” is: we are passionate about what we do; we get things right; and we want to make a difference – improve things.  The problem occurs when others don’t give a rip about these things. Michaels’ primary thrust in the evaluation arena is impact evaluation, which is – what difference does the program make?  The questions are (1) what is happening versus what would have…
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The Smoking Gleick

By Energy Rant, Government, Sustainability One Comment
Last week I described a hypothetical, unethical scam to achieve a desired outcome, which leads up to this week’s rant, which I didn’t have space for last week. I first came across this in The Wall Street Journal editorial page.  The Heartland institute, which I had never heard of, or at best I forgot about, is a global-warming-crisis skeptic.  From the horse’s mouth, they believe global warming is real, that man contributes, but they are skeptics of the alarmism and the magnitude of man’s impacts. They are a privately funded non-profit and yes, they get money from big oil just…
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Integrity Police

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, Utility Stuff No Comments
There are a number of things any respectable consulting firm simply does not allow – because there is no good, reasonable, defensible, or Hail Mary excuse.  For example, there are proposal deadlines or interviews with contract selection committees for big projects.  As long as there is reasonable time to prepare a proposal there is no excuse to ask for an extension or plead forgiveness for an inept, disheveled pile of dung.  Reasonable preparatory time for a straight forward project not requiring subs might be four weeks.  A more substantial project in the $1-2 million range requiring subs should get six…
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Evil V Clueless

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, Stimulus, Sustainability, Tax Stuff 2 Comments
This week I have an I-can’t-take-it-anymore topic: gasoline prices.  It is not the gasoline prices that chap me, but the pouting, mud throwing, food fights, whining and probably worst of all the stupid solutions to the so-called problems. Gasoline is like any other product or service that is a must-have in society and therefore, like electricity and natural gas, consumers feel entitled to all they want at a negligible price.  And by the way, why all the hype right now?  It’s around $3.50 per gallon.  Being an election year obviously feeds the flames and I guess there just isn’t enough…
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America to Construction Guy – Drop Dead

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, Renewable Energy, Sustainability No Comments
Remember the old kooks who thought they knew better, gave you stupid rules, and warned you about things you would come to regret because you ignored them?  They were your parents.  If you are old enough, maybe a parent yourself, or maybe not, you should realize that OMG!  I’ve turned into my parents!  It’s wisdom through experience and in particular from making mistakes and failure. As a supervisor, one thing I learned, and is unfortunately a fact of life, is that you have to let staff make their own mistakes because no matter how many times you tell people not…
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Paint by Numbers EE

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
True or false: It’s easier to teach Pablo Picasso how to paint a house than it is to make a house painter into a Picasso-grade painter/artist.  For the answer, keep reading. I was sitting in a session at last week’s AESP conference sipping my weak overpriced Starbucks when I almost sprayed a mouthful on the bystanders sitting in front of me.  Not one, but two guys opined that it is easier to teach, for example, a refrigeration expert retrocommissioning than it is to teach a retrocommissioning/energy expert efficient refrigeration.  Allow me to demonstrate with an example, a true story. A…
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Energy Savings Rubbish

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
The best thing about working in our industry is the potential for continuous learning, unlike nearly any other field.  There are enough things to learn about buildings, manufacturing, systems, how they are built, as in design, construction and commissioning to fill a 45 year engineering career.  One always finds something “new” even in old buildings – bizarre design concepts for example.  Have you ever seen how Fig Newtons are made?  It isn’t easy. Engineers might think, what else is there to programs besides determining energy savings, simple payback and possibly ROI?  About 75%, if not, more.  There are market assessments,…
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Dodging the Absurd

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
In Stalin Lives, I mentioned our plan for securing an ENERGY STAR® clothes washer and dryer for our house.  What I did not mention was that the local appliance stores do not even stock gas-heated dryers. Think about how stupid it is to generate electricity with maybe 35% thermal efficiency, lose 10% of it to line losses, as discussed last week, in it’s transport to the home and then use this high-value energy as a toaster coil to dry clothes.  We, as well as I am sure millions of households, use “gas”, natural gas in our case and propane in…
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Flying Rodents

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 2 Comments
Before I get to this week’s rant, or I should say, this week’s primary rant, I need to share this with you.  Just before the holidays in Strange Magic,I tore into hands-free energy audit software.  All you need is an address and billing information and voila, there it is; an energy audit that tells you everything you need to know to cut your energy bills by a certain guesstimate. This week I came across an apparent competitor to the one discussed in Strange Magic, so I viewed their online charting and graphics.  They present analysis via bar chart for various…
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