by Jeff Ihnen | Jul 10, 2023 | Energy Rant
McDonald’s McNuggets I picked up an iPhone at the Verizon store for my mother last week as I visited her in Northwest Iowa. She’s wheelchair-bound with one good hand for daily functions such as eating. After the iPhone pickup, I decided to get some lunch for us at...
by Michaels Energy | Jul 6, 2023 | The Big Why
Over the past few years, in response to the growing climate change crisis, federal, state, and local governments’ funding of energy efficiency and decarbonization projects has increased substantially (to put it mildly). In many cases, both programs and participants...
by Jeff Ihnen | Jun 27, 2023 | Energy Rant
Lazard recently released its 16th levelized cost of energy or LCOE report. The LCOE represents the total cost of generating (or storing) electricity over the asset’s life divided by the total MWh or kWh delivered. The total cost includes construction, land,...
by Jeff Ihnen | Jun 20, 2023 | Energy Rant
The origin of this post is a spicy Zerohedge article, The Phony Climate Change Catastrophe, specifically, carbon capture from ambient air. That reminded me of an April article in The Wall Street Journal that referenced the same redonkulous effort by Occidental...
by Jeff Ihnen | Jun 14, 2023 | Energy Rant
A couple weeks ago, I quickly read this article, Cracking the Code – Aligned Incentives, on EnergyCentral.com. It concerns incentives for high-performance employees, but my read was about incentives for efficiency programs. It applies to that too. Myopic Focus...
by Michaels Energy | Jun 13, 2023 | The Big Why
Evaluations can sometimes feel like a regulatory checkbox. This can seem especially true for process evaluations which may be required but provide seemingly limited value. However, process evaluations can provide programs with invaluable information if the...
by Jeff Ihnen | Jun 6, 2023 | Energy Rant
East of the Mississippi, we haven’t had a heat-induced stress test of the electric grid for a long time. I don’t remember names, but I remember weather events, places, and numbers well. The hottest summer of my life was 1988, with many days over 100F throughout the...
by Jeff Ihnen | May 30, 2023 | Energy Rant
We open this week’s Energy Rant with a called shot. Michael and Chantell Sackett are enjoying fresh mulch provided by the SCOTUS as they sent the EPA’s interpretation of “navigable waterways” to the woodchipper as predicted here last October. The energy transition is...
by Jeff Ihnen | May 24, 2023 | Energy Rant
I spent last week in California, where the energy transition is being jammed at a breakneck pace like a square peg in a round hole. I’ll set the stage with just a few things. First, the duck curve, a feature of excessive solar generation that began overgenerating a...
by Jeff Ihnen | May 16, 2023 | Energy Rant
Now and then, a seemingly dumb idea flies through my neocortex like a bat at dusk. Bats have Mr. Magoovian eyesight and rely on radar technology to catch bugs. They are silent in flight. A few weeks ago, one such metaphorical flying rodent got too close for me to...
