by Jeff Ihnen | May 8, 2017 | Energy Rant
This week, I am joined by someone who actually knows what she is talking about: Kristin Laursen, our Director of Marketing and Business Development. The two of us attended the Association of Energy Services Professionals (AESP) Spring Conference in Salt Lake City last...
by Jeff Ihnen | May 1, 2017 | Energy Rant
We are taking a break from exergy this week, and we are going to examine what is happening in distorted electricity markets around the country. This will be somewhat of a sequel to Regulating Deregulation and Wind’s Other Big Subsidy. Too much of a good thing,...
by Jeff Ihnen | Apr 24, 2017 | Energy Rant
Last week we introduced exergy and at least one application of it in a building. First, let me make something very clear, for the refrigeration cycle, if I’m cooling beer or freezing leftovers, the heat that is sucked out of those masses is rejected somewhere else....
by Jeff Ihnen | Apr 18, 2017 | Energy Rant
Exergy is a sexy word (maybe only to energy nerds), but it represents a vital class of measures and opportunities as we sprint head-on into the game changer (cliché alert) that will be the post-gravy-train-of-lighting-retrofit-era of energy efficiency. Pay attention!...
by Jeff Ihnen | Mar 27, 2017 | Energy Rant
I have written rather popular articles on critical thinking and climate change in greenhouse gas basics, tribal views (non-critical thinking) on climate change, and others. This week, I am going to bring the two together, with this article from the New York Times...
by Jeff Ihnen | Mar 13, 2017 | Energy Rant
A while back, a reader asked, “why don’t we switch to at least localized direct current power grids?” The simple answer is it would cost a fortune for both the utility and the consumer to change all distribution and consuming loads to take DC power. As I researched...
by Jeff Ihnen | Mar 6, 2017 | Energy Rant
This post ends with a quiz and more than 49 $5 Starbucks card winners for correct answers. Why the quiz for this post? Because the subject is power factor. Most descriptions of power factor remind me of riding the NYC subway many years ago before passengers buried...
by Jeff Ihnen | Feb 27, 2017 | Energy Rant
Most of you reading this owe your lives to the phenomenon described in this post. Therefore, it is worth understanding precisely how grid power is generated, and what it looks like. And of course, you will not find this anywhere else. Rant topics are inspired by...
by Jeff Ihnen | Feb 13, 2017 | Energy Rant
When this post launches, I will be sitting in a critical thinking course as part of AESP’s National Conference. As luck would have it, I also stumbled onto a couple interesting articles while eating my curds and whey last week. The first covers echo chambers from Inc....
by Jeff Ihnen | Feb 6, 2017 | Energy Rant
Most readers have likely seen the business triangle: cheap, fast, good [or accurate]; pick two. My first emotional reaction to the triangle was that it was something a lazy bum[1] would say. However, as a geezer, I think the law is valid for consulting. I will explain...
