Many posts ago, I wrote “The More You Spend, The More You Save” explaining how poor system control wastes energy but results in even greater energy savings for efficient equipment. For example, consider an air handling system that wastes heating energy provided by an efficient boiler. The boiler saves x% versus a conventional model, so x% multiplied by greater use (wasted energy) results in “more” savings. Recently I picked up on buzz that argues greater efficiency results in greater energy consumption. At one point I recall reading in the Wall Street Journal an editorial that argued more efficient vehicles just…
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One way the utility business works like the rest of the economy is that it sells its products/commodities at a price that is higher than the cost of production, on average. The more utilities sell, the greater their gross profit. This is at odds with utilities’ incentive to save energy with energy efficiency programs. As a result, some utility executives are opposed to energy efficiency programs. That is a short-sighted view but that’s a story for a different day. As a result of this dichotomy, a pricing mechanism known as decoupling has been developed. This NREL paper gives a pretty…
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In many states, energy efficiency programs are meeting annual savings goals and their incentive cash is depleted in a fraction of the year. States where energy efficiency programs are a new offering are especially quick to meet goals. These states include Ohio, Michigan and Illinois. These states rely heavily on lighting, which accounts for somewhere in the range of 90% of the total savings. Even mature states like Wisconsin and California still get well over half their savings from lighting and other prescriptive measures (rebates). Wisconsin surpassed goals and ran out of incentives last program year. There are many ways…
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Automobiles have really changed over the past 30 years, and in some ways for the worse. Back in the 1970s before hardly anyone purchased imports, imports were small and domestic vehicles were hulking behemoths. Then it was the second, or was it the third or fourth – doesn’t matter – energy crisis hit in the late 1970s and domestic cars shrunk in a big way. The Ford Mustang went from a muscle car to feeble runt. A 1982 Mustang was the first car I owned. It was also by far the crappiest car I ever owned. This was the first…
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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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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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Jenny Craig customers do it all the time – pay money to consume less. This may make perfect sense to people who understand customers’ needs, but to others it seems really stupid to pay somebody to help use less of something. This is a bit like utility programs that spend money for customers to use less of their product. The vast majority of our energy work comes from referrals and repeat clients. On numerous occasions, we seemed to have customers at the tipping point, only to have them bail out at the last minute. Why? The utility introduced us to…
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