by Jeff Ihnen | Jan 18, 2022 | Energy Rant
This week we continue responding to the reader question, “What kind of home can withstand fire, hurricanes, floods, heat domes & polar vortex?” Before we get into design considerations, let’s look at modes of failure. From my research, hurricanes and tornadoes...
by Jeff Ihnen | Jan 11, 2022 | Energy Rant
A reader last week asked, “What kind of home can withstand fire, hurricanes, floods, heat domes, and polar vortex?” This is a great question. I love the challenge, so here we go[1]. Flooding and Landslides Think ahead and ask yourself, “what if” before or even after...
by Jeff Ihnen | Jan 4, 2022 | Energy Rant
While compiling the last post in which I reviewed the accuracy of my predictions for 2021, I realized that most of those were in the 20-30 year timeframe. For 2022, I forced myself to choose most things that will or will not happen in 2022 – the good and the bad. Coal...
by Michaels Energy | Dec 22, 2021 | The Big Why
A major theme of the Big Why of Evaluation is that evaluations always involve balancing accuracy and costs due to time and budget constraints as well as the pesky issue of dealing with counterfactuals. The eternal question of “how good is good enough” drives one of...
by Jeff Ihnen | Dec 21, 2021 | Energy Rant
Predicting the future with infinite degrees of freedom is hard, especially when projected years into the future. A few years ago, Public Utilities Fortnightly posted an article about the accuracy of The Jetsons forecasting the future. William Hanna and Joseph Barbera...
by Jeff Ihnen | Dec 14, 2021 | Energy Rant
I introduced exergy to readers 4.5 years ago, had a refresher on it for industrial decarbonization earlier this year, and it is part of our decarbonization training course that is frontrunning AESP’s annual conference in Nashville on February 7th. Preserving v...
by Jeff Ihnen | Dec 7, 2021 | Energy Rant
Last week as I began writing the second DRIPE post, I started down an electric-utility-pricing rabbit hole. I pulled back and saved it for this week – rabbit hole, botfly larvae, and all[1]. Now is a good time to play a card dealt to me a few weeks ago. An article in...
by Jeff Ihnen | Nov 30, 2021 | Energy Rant
Does more industrial [or commercial or residential] energy efficiency lower energy prices for all? That is a partial title of a paper published at the 2015 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Industry[1]and the source of last week’s sassy DRIPE post ( DRIPE = demand...
by Michaels Energy | Nov 23, 2021 | The Big Why
Every now and then, we are asked to evaluate an energy efficiency project completed at a business that has since closed. This poses some tricky questions: how much savings should a program claim for these measures and how much savings will actually occur? As the...
by Jeff Ihnen | Nov 22, 2021 | Energy Rant
What do you envision from the word dripe? I think of boiling cowhides as feedstock for collagen peptides in the manufacture of gelatins used for deserts or your favorite mascara or lipstick. I was close on both counts. The word is tripe (not dripe), which is cow...
