by Jeff Ihnen | Dec 9, 2020 | Energy Rant
For those of you who are not doctors or veterinarians for our beloved pets, have you ever been in an exam room when the technician brings in X-RAY results and posts them on the backlit thing and leaves you alone with them before the doctor arrives? I was in this...
by Jeff Ihnen | Dec 2, 2020 | Energy Rant
I’m an insatiable consumer of information, but I need to learn more. For example, if you haven’t watched the excellent movie Saving Private Ryan, do it. I don’t understand why the allies attacked from the water, in the daylight, when they were sitting ducks for the...
by Michaels Energy | Nov 25, 2020 | The Big Why
In addition to understanding energy efficiency, evaluators also search for efficiencies in cost and time. Due to schedule and budget constraints, we focus evaluation resources towards the most impactful tasks, such as studying the measures or elements of a program...
by Jeff Ihnen | Nov 25, 2020 | Energy Rant
I could not compete with my former self and Gene Simons from last week, but I went back to the Gallup psychoanalysis barrel for more inspiration. I don’t want to write about myself unless it helps you understand why I’m so, uh, peculiar. Like Mr. Simons, I’m an...
by Jeff Ihnen | Nov 18, 2020 | Energy Rant
Employees at Michaels get a free psych-x profile (it’s not my area of expertise) to determine personal strengths through Gallup. My top strength is “context,” which means I’m a historian. What does this mean? I observe history, including my mistakes, others’ mistakes,...
by Jeff Ihnen | Nov 11, 2020 | Energy Rant
In this week’s Energy Rant, we’re covering the final segment of good, perfect, and real carbon targets. There are two sources of carbon-free energy. First, we have the category of renewable with wind, solar, hydro, and some geothermal. Second, we have...
by Jeff Ihnen | Nov 4, 2020 | Energy Rant
In this week’s Energy Rant, we’re covering part three of good, perfect, and real carbon targets. In Part I of this series, we examined how various storage technologies work, their pluses, and minuses. In Part II, we put numbers to generation and storage...
by Jeff Ihnen | Oct 28, 2020 | Energy Rant
In this week’s Energy Rant, we’re covering part two of good, perfect, and real carbon targets. Last week we looked at grid-scale energy storage options for a couple of them, namely hydrogen and flywheels; I asked, “What could go wrong?” To be fair, my...
by Michaels Energy | Oct 26, 2020 | The Big Why
One of the most difficult jobs that evaluators have is estimating attribution of savings to energy efficiency programs. Trying to put a numeric counterfactual value on a complex decision-making process is extremely challenging! I think it is this difficulty that makes...
by Jeff Ihnen | Oct 21, 2020 | Energy Rant
I recently delivered an electrification presentation for Wisconsin Public Utility Institute’s Energy Utility Basics course. While introducing myself, I said, “I’m an engineer, and I can’t help it.” I also said the answer to the question, “Can we ___?” is...
