by Jeff Ihnen | Feb 24, 2021 | Energy Rant
Last week when the Rant “went to press,” which is to say, when I wrote it Saturday, the arctic blast was merely a cold shot of weather like I have experienced dozens of times. I didn’t start seeing the chaos in the south until Monday. It was an avoidable tragedy...
by Jessica Wagner | Feb 17, 2021 | The Big Why
Welcome back to the Challenges of Estimating NTG, where we explore the challenges of assigning a numeric counterfactual value to a complex decision-making process. Part 1 discussed the baseline in free-ridership questions to determine what would have happened in the...
by Jeff Ihnen | Feb 17, 2021 | Energy Rant
It’s been cold here in the Midwest. In ten days in La Crosse, WI, where I am, the average low was -13.7F, average high, 4.3, and the average of averages over the ten days was -4.7F. We smashed one daily record. There have been no all-time lows, but this is a grind. In...
by Jeff Ihnen | Feb 10, 2021 | Energy Rant
No one will confuse me with Simon Sinek, a great speaker, but one thing I can do is nail my timeslot. If I’m mindful of the time I have available, 20 minutes, etc., I will nail it – except one time[1]. That was last fall as I was doing my fourth rendition of...
by Jeff Ihnen | Feb 3, 2021 | Energy Rant
Does every decision boil down to a binary choice? A binary choice is a decision between two alternatives, like yes or no, and do or do not. This applies to determining what ‘is’ and ‘is not’ a factor in decision making. For example, deciding that the color of a car...
by Jeff Ihnen | Jan 27, 2021 | Energy Rant
Have you ever thrown a cat into the deep end of a swimming pool? Neither have I, but I bet they wouldn’t like it. Likewise, status-quo program evaluators will not like what’s coming down the pike for several reasons, starting with one in this post for residential and...
by Jessica Wagner | Jan 20, 2021 | The Big Why
It’s January and after a somewhat eventful 2020, flipping the calendar to a new year seems extra meaningful. Because many people set New Year’s resolutions[1], I thought a good topic for this month’s blog would be the goals of energy efficiency programs and how...
by Jeff Ihnen | Jan 20, 2021 | Energy Rant
We’re going off-road this week, inspired by some things I read in The Zweig Letter. The title of the article is Decentralization to be more Agile and Adaptable. The term distributed employee resources (DERs) comes to mind. This is especially timely as a follow up to...
by Jeff Ihnen | Jan 13, 2021 | Energy Rant
I am typically afforded the freedom to chase rabbits as I write these posts, but last week my mission was to reflect on 2020 and forecast 2021. In the process of starting that, I chased a rabbit that is the subject of this post. It is as easy to shoot down ideas as it...
by Jessica Wagner | Jan 7, 2021 | Videos & Webinars
Energy storage has been around since shortly after man harnessed fire. A pile or stock of wood is stored energy waiting to beused. More recently, for hundreds of years. ice was harvested from ponds and lakes for preserving foods through the summerand shoulder seasons....
