Blog

This week, I dive into something I have wanted to know more about for some time: efficiency program funding mechanisms.  This post is based on a recent paper released by ACEEE, Valuing Efficiency: A Review of Lost Revenue Adjustment Mechanisms. Utilities must be allowed to make enough money to draw required investor capital, debt and equity,Read more

Our industry really needs to call timeout; take a look around and ask, “what the hell are we doing?”  Build it [energy program] and they will come?  No.  Build it, and they will be alienated and give it the middle digit. As noted most recently in a post on condensing boilers, I have written extensivelyRead more

It is mid-June, and strangely here in the northern Midwest we have experienced virtually no warm, humid weather yet this year.  The weather can flip like a switch from a pattern of rain and clouds of the past several weeks to one that is hot and humid with little precipitation.  Now is a good timeRead more

Howitzer Explosion Guy.  That was the nickname Wayne Campbell of Wayne’s World gave to Wolf Blitzer, CNN’s correspondent for the Gulf War in 1991.  “Sheeyeeaaah.  I’m so sure.”  “He just made it up for the war.”  Too bad Wayne isn’t still doing his show from his parents’ basement on community access channel 10 in Aurora,Read more

Everyone has probably heard at least one hundred or maybe a thousand light bulb jokes – the ones that disparage a class, gender, group, country, state, generation, etc.  The point is to make fun of the group in question because changing a light bulb is so simple, but it takes several doofuses in the disparagedRead more

Last week’s AESP Spring Conference was the best that I can recall, in terms of the content delivered, in my opinion.  Perhaps I got lucky and went to the right presentations.  Perhaps it’s because I went to more presentations than usual.  Most likely it is for another reason, and readers will have to call meRead more

Recently, I’ve snagged a number of articles, blogs, and news feeds about the great idea for using electric water heaters as energy storage devices.  E Source even goes so far as to insinuate water heaters are like batteries: “How the Water Heater Just Became a Lean, Mean, Battery-Killin’ Machine”. When I was an impressionable youngRead more

The big energy saving opportunities in a building are usually hidden from the unsuspecting field auditor.  The obvious exception is lighting because it isn’t hidden!  The hidden things are what go on behind closed doors in the dark.  Yes, the salacious activity spawned by an out of control brain – the energy management system. Similarly,Read more

Energy efficiency gets a bad rap, but I shall attempt to slap some sense into efficiency deadbeats.  I will start by beating the simple-payback-is-bad dead horse one more time.  It may giddyup and run as a result. I am quite certain that one of the things that make investment in energy efficiency the homely muttRead more

I imagine the EPA is working feverishly on their final ruling for the Clean Power Plan (proposed under the Clean Air Act), due this June.  Meanwhile, many states and one prominent company, Murray Energy, are digging in to do legal battle for decades to come, possibly.  The “possibly” part of that would occur if theRead more

About two years ago, I wrote Duct Leakage Chaff, which explained that residential duct leakage is a mole hill, a red herring, a boogeyman.  I recently reviewed a report[1] that nails my assertions from June 2013. The program evaluation (residential HVAC tune-up) was thorough, likely expensive, but worthwhile.  Too often, not just in evaluation, butRead more

Last week I discussed the need to simplify energy codes to disallow the variable air volume systems that (1) 95% of design and construction professionals don’t understand from an energy perspective, or (2) require constant babysitting by the other 5%.  This week the topic is commissioning; another critical function to achieve real energy performance. CommissioningRead more